David Brower and Friends of the Earth

David Brower

Eco-activist, Environmental Educator, Planet Citizen

SJS / GreenPolicy360 siterunner: David's life was a testament to taking on challenges. It was about setting high goals and going for them, whether in the Sierras of California or in Washington DC as he attempted to protect the Colorado River. He was a force who left a legacy as he reached out to coming generations and attempted to protect and preserve the beautiful natural inheritance that environmentalists value so deeply and preach as a prescient voice of our need to change our ways and bring forward a new economics.

Over the years, he often spoke of how humans are profoundly impacting the environment and have a responsibility to 'get it together', to look inward at our business and political systems and to change them for the better. He gave a 'sermon', as teachers are wont to do, to open up eyes and the imagination as he would talk of change, and how we have to make the changes that are needed. Now. He wasn't into the usual go along to get along business mentality. His life was a living ethic of appreciating and valuing what should be valued.

His many friends saw him as complicated and loyal and one of our mutual friends, John de Graaf, tells the story of David's sermon on humanity this way in remembrance:

In many of his speeches, he used a powerful metaphor to point out the absurdity of our current faith in limitless growth.

He compressed the age of the earth, estimated by scientists at some 4.6 billion years, into one week. When you do this, a day represents about 650 million years, an hour, 27 million, a minute, about 450,000, and a second, 7,500. Think about that.

On Sunday morning, the earth congeals from cosmic gases, and by late Monday, the first tiny life forms emerge. In the next few days, they become larger, more complex and more wondrous. Before dawn on the last day—Saturday—strangely-shaped creatures fill the Cambrian seas. In the afternoon of that very last day of the week, giant reptiles thunder across the land and fill the sky. The dinosaurs enjoy a long run, commanding Earth’s stage for about six hours, before an asteroid or a series of volcanic eruptions makes earth too cold for them.

Late that evening, mammals, able to withstand a cooler world, flourish and evolve, until, less than a minute before midnight, on that final night of the week, we show up. Only about 10,000 years ago in real time, less than two seconds before midnight in our metaphor, humans develop agriculture and start building cities. At a third of a second before midnight, Buddha is born; at a quarter of a second, Christ; at a fifth of a second, Mohammed.

Only a thirtieth of a second before midnight, we launch the Industrial Revolution, and, after World War II, perhaps one hundredth of a second before midnight in our week of creation—again, on the final night — the age of consumerism — or what I’ve called “the age of Affluenza,” begins.

In that hundredth of a second, Brower and others have pointed out, we have managed to consume more resources than did all human beings all together in all of previous history. We have diminished our soils, wildlife, fisheries, fossil fuels and forests by half. We have caused the extinction of countless other species, and we have dramatically changed the climate. Think of what it means that we have done all of this in this blink of the geological eye.

There are people, Brower said, who believe that what we have been doing for that last one-hundredth of a second can go on indefinitely. They are considered normal, reasonable, intelligent people; but, really, they are stark, raving mad. We can’t grow on like this. We will not find what we need by worshipping economic growth and material progress. In fact, we just might drive ourselves to extinction.

We will need to live more lightly on the earth, more slowly, appreciating simpler things, natural things...

Let us remember the life and message of David Brower. He was not content to let things be lost, things that should not be lost, that can not be lost.

He knew things. He knew to let the rivers run clear and mountains speak. He lived life as few do. David left us lessons we should recall, lessons of life.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c6/Sierra_Club_logo.png/150px-Sierra_Club_logo.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brower

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 Floyd Dominy, 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.

https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/foeilogo-en.jpg

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.

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 until his death in 2000.

A supporter of Ralph Nader, Brower flew to Denver in June 2000 for the Green Party convention. The day before he died, Brower cast his absentee ballot for Nader. He died at his home in Berkeley, California, on November 5, 2000.

A monument, Spaceship Earth, was erected in his honor at Kennesaw State University. The intention is that the monument will serve as a permanent reminder to future generations about the delicate nature of our planet.

······························································

Modern Environmental Movement

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Environmental_movement

SJS / GreenPolicy360 siterunner: Back in the 1990s, David, Danny Moses (editor of Sierra Club Books) and I worked together to run a Green Education group with Earth Island... David became a strong supporter of the Green Party platform and attended our presidential nominating convention in Denver in 2000 where our founding platform was passed...

Remembering David as one of the great environmental visionaries of our era...

https://training.fws.gov/History/images/Brower.jpg