David Brower
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David Ross Brower (July 1, 1912 – November 5, 2000) was a prominent environmentalist and the founder of many environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club Foundation, the John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies, Friends of the Earth (1969), the League of Conservation Voters, Earth Island Institute (1982), North Cascades Conservation Council, and Fate of the Earth Conferences. From 1952 to 1969 he served as the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club, and served on its board three times: from 1941-1953; 1983-1988; and 1995-2000.
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[edit] Early life
Brower was born in Berkeley, California. He was married to Anne Hus Brower (1913 – 2001) whom he met when they were both editors at the University of California Press in Berkeley. As a skilled mountaineer, he made the first ascent of seventy routes in Yosemite and elsewhere in the western United States, including Shiprock in 1939, which was then known as "the last great American climbing problem." Following a failed attempt in 1935 to make the first ascent of the remote, icy Mount Waddington in British Columbia, with a Sierra Club group, Brower added winter climbing to his expertise and made multiple first winter ascents of peaks in the Sierra Nevada.[1]
During World War II he was a Lieutenant in the 10th Mountain Division, training its soldiers in mountaineering and cross-country skiing in Vermont and Washington states and earning a Bronze Star in action in Italy.[1] Brower's role in the 10th Mountain Division is featured in the documentary, Fire on the Mountain.
[edit] Career with Sierra Club
After the war, Brower returned to his job at the University of California Press, and began editing the Sierra Club Bulletin in 1946. Brower was named the first executive director of the Sierra Club in 1952, and joined the fight against the Echo Park Dam in Utah's Dinosaur National Monument. Taking advantage of his background in publishing, Brower rushed This is Dinosaur into press with publisher Alfred Knopf. Conservationists successfully lobbied Congress to delete Echo Park Dam from the Colorado River Project in 1955, and the Sierra Club received much of the credit. Brower began the Club's Exhibit Format book series with This is the American Earth in 1960, followed by the highly successful In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World, with color photographs by Eliot Porter in 1962. These coffee-table books sold well and introduced the Sierra Club to new members interested in wilderness preservation. Brower published two new titles a year in the series, but they began to lose money for the organization after 1964. Financial management began to be a bone of contention between Brower and the Club's board of directors.[2]
Building on the biennial Wilderness Conferences which the Club launched in 1949 together with The Wilderness Society, Brower helped the Club win passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. Brower and the Sierra Club also led a major battle to stop the Bureau of Reclamation from building two dams that would flood portions of the Grand Canyon. In June 1966 the Club placed full-page ads in the New York Times and the Washington Post asking, "Should we also flood the Sistine Chapel so tourists can get nearer the ceiling?" The campaign brought in many new members, including such important figures as Martin Litton. The Internal Revenue Service announced it was suspending the Club's 501(c)(3) charitable organization status. The board had set up the Sierra Club Foundation as an alternative for tax-deductible contributions, but revenues to the Club dropped, despite victories in blocking the Grand Canyon dams and a considerable increase in membership.[3]
As annual deficits increased, tension grew between Brower and the Sierra Club board of directors. Another conflict grew over the Club's position on the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant planned for construction by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) near San Luis Obispo, California. The Club had played a major role in blocking PG&E's plan for a nuclear power plant at Bodega Bay in the early 1960s, but that campaign had centered on the earthquake danger from the nearby San Andreas Fault, not out of opposition to nuclear power itself. The Club's board of directors had voted to support the Diablo Canyon site for the power plant in exchange for PG&E moving its initial site from the environmentally sensitive Nipomo Dunes. In 1967 a membership referendum upheld the board's policy. Brower had come to believe that nuclear power was a dangerous mistake at any location, and he publicly voiced his opposition to Diablo Canyon, in defiance of the Club's official policy.
Sierra Club board elections in the late 1960s produced sharply defined pro- and anti-Brower factions. In 1968 Brower's supporters won a majority, but in 1969 anti-Brower candidates won all five open positions. Brower was charged with financial recklessness and insubordination by two of his former close friends, photographer Ansel Adams and board president Richard Leonard. Brower's resignation was accepted by a board vote of ten to five.[4]
Eventually reconciled with the Sierra Club, Brower was elected to the board of directors for a term from 1983 to 1988, and again from 1995 to 2000. Brower was deeply concerned about issues of overpopulation and immigration - which was a major factor leading to his resignation in protest from the board of directors in 2000.[1] "Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us," he said, "and immigration is part of that problem. It has to be addressed."
[edit] Career with Friends of the Earth
Brower founded Friends of the Earth (FOE) in 1969, soon after resigning as executive director of the Sierra Club. The move was timely, as FOE was positioned to grow with the burst of environmental concern generated by the first Earth Day in April 1970. FOE also benefited from the publicity generated by a series of articles in The New Yorker by John McPhee, later published as Encounters with the Archdruid, which recounted Brower's confrontations with a geologist and mining engineer, a resort developer, and the director of the Bureau of Reclamation. Brower so enjoyed being called the Archdruid that he later used the term in his e-mail address.
FOE set up its headquarters in San Francisco, and opened an office in Washington, D.C.. Brower soon spun off two new organizations from the FOE Washington staff, the League of Conservation Voters in 1970 and the Environmental Policy Center in 1971. Brower's international contacts led to the founding of FOE International in 1971, a loose federation of sister organizations in some forty-four countries. Brower also started a publications program at FOE, which had initial success with The Environmental Handbook in the wake of Earth Day, but then began to lose money.
Although Brower's background was in the wilderness preservation wing of the conservation movement, he quickly led FOE to take on many of the issues raised by the new environmentalists. FOE campaigned against the Alaska pipeline, the supersonic transport airplane (SST), nuclear power, and the use of the defoliant Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. After Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980, FOE led the opposition to Interior secretary James G. Watt's efforts to sell and lease public lands in the West and develop land adjacent to the National Parks. Brower retired as executive director of FOE on its tenth anniversary in 1979, but continued as chairman of its board of directors. FOE's growing debt and tension between Washington lobbying and grassroots action led to a crisis between Brower and a majority of the board that recalled his conflict with the Sierra Club board. Facing staff cuts in 1984, Brower appealed over the board directly to the membership for emergency contributions. He was removed from the board for insubordination, but was reinstated when he threatened a lawsuit. In 1985 the board voted to close the San Francisco office and move to Washington, D.C.. A referendum of the membership supported the board majority, and Brower resigned in 1986 to work through his Earth Island Institute.[5]
[edit] Later years with Earth Island Institute
Brower had incorporated Earth Island Institute in 1982. After FOE moved its headquarters to Washington, D.C. in 1986, Brower developed Earth Island as a loosely-structured incubator for innovative projects in ecology and social justice. Although he chaired the board of directors, Brower stayed in the background as co-directors David Philips and John Knox ran the organization. Projects were required to bring in their own funding, and often went their own way once well-established. Groups formed under Earth Island's umbrella include the Rainforest Action Network, the Environmental Project on Central America (EPOCA), and many others. Freed from administrative worries and budget controversies, Brower was able to continue to travel, speak and work on many of his long-standing concerns. In addition to his returning to the Sierra Club board for two separate terms, he also served on the Board of Directors for Native Forest Council from 1988 through his death in 2000. A supporter of Ralph Nader, Brower flew to Denver in June, 2000, for the Green Party convention and cast his absentee ballot for Nader the day before he died.
[edit] Quotes
- All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.
- There is no business to be done on a dead planet. (American deathcore band All Shall Perish uses this quote as a song title on their second studio release The Price Of Existence.)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b Steve Roper, "David Ross Brower", American Alpine Journal, 2001, p. 455.
- ^ Stephen Fox, John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement, pp. 272-290, 316-322.
- ^ Michael P. Cohen, The History of the Sierra Club, 1892-1970, pp. 333-394.
- ^ Cohen, History of the Sierra Club, pp. 395-434.
- ^ Tom Turner, Friends of the Earth: The First Sixteen Years (San Francisco: Earth Island Institute, 1986), 47 pp.
[edit] Bibliography
- Brower, David, For Earth's Sake: The Life and Times of David Brower (Salt Lake City: Gibbs-Smith, 1990). ISBN 0-87905-013-6
- Brower, David with Steve Chapple, Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run (New York: HarperCollins, 1995). ISBN 0-06-251430-X
- Cohen, Michael P., The History of the Sierra Club, 1892-1970 (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988). ISBN 0-87156-732-6
- Fox, Stephen, John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981). ISBN 0-316-29110-2
- McPhee, John, Encounters with the Archdruid (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971). ISBN 0-374-14822-8
[edit] Video resources
- For Earth's Sake: The Life and Times of David Brower. Produced in 1989 by John de Graaf in cooperation with KCTS-Seattle. Distributed by Bullfrog Films, Oley, PA 19547. 58 minutes.
- Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America. Directed by Kelly Duane for Loteria Films, 2004. DVD, 78 min.
