Environmental hero David Brower died of cancer last November at 88. Brower joined the
Sierra Club in 1933, and served as its executive director from 1952 to 1969. As author
John McPhee wrote in his popular 1971 profile, Encounters With the Archdruid, Brower was
the Sierra Club's "leader, its principal strategist, its preeminent fang." He
lit a fire under what was then a serene hiking club and later sparked the first flames of
other influential organizations, such as the League of Conservation Voters, Friends of the
Earth, and Earth Island Institute.
He helped pass the Wilderness Act and halt construction
of a dam in Dinosaur National Monument. He also helped win protection for Kings Canyon,
North Cascades, and Redwood National Parks, along with Point Reyes and Cape Cod National
Seashores. In the article at right, McPhee reflects on the year he spent traveling with
Brower in the late 1960s while researching the book that helped bring Brower to national
prominence.
A man of multiple talents, Brower was a master of persuasion. He convinced several
generations of idealistic youth, through speeches, images, and the printed word, that
saving the earth was an urgent spiritual matter. Legions of young people donned backpacks
and headed for the Sierra Nevada after reading On the Loose, a 1967 Sierra Club book
Brower published about two brothers coming of age in the wilderness. Thousands more were
converted by the stunning details of his nature calendars and big pictorial books. (Both
were forms of public persuasion he invented and perfected.)
Millions witnessed his
successful crusade to keep dams out of the Grand Canyon, when he famously asked in a New
York Times ad, "Should we also flood the Sistine Chapel so tourists can get nearer
the ceiling?" And many were captivated by seeing him in person and hearing his
"sermon," in which he'd wave a photo of our planet and say, "This is the
sudden insight from Apollo. There it is. That's all there is. We see through the eyes of
the astronauts how fragile our life is, how thin is the epithelium of the
atmosphere."
Tom Turner, who now works for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund in San Francisco, was
hired by Brower shortly after college, in 1968. "He brought me into the movement on
impulse as he so often did with people, hiring me to edit a book-something I had no
training for," Turner says. "I stayed on as his assistant, then moved to Friends
of the Earth, where he made me editor of its journal, Not Man Apart. I learned how to
write from him, and how to edit, how to listen, how to ask questions. He always encouraged
people to pursue what interested them and what they were good at. He asked the world of
you, but never asked anyone to do something he wouldn't do (and be able to do better)
himself."
Brower's biggest regret was the damming of Glen Canyon in Arizona. "Glen Canyon
died, and I was partly responsible for its needless death," he wrote in The Place No
One Knew, a Sierra Club book published in 1963. He said he wore "sackcloth and
ashes" for years, convinced that he could have saved Glen Canyon had he worked hard
enough on its behalf. In recent years though, he took a new tack, proposing that the
Bureau of Reclamation drain the water from behind the dam.
"The fact is, Glen Canyon
is still there," he wrote in the March/April 1997 issue of Sierra. "With that
thought in mind, I've turned from regret to restoration." In his frequent public
appearances, Brower began to advocate a three-pronged approach to environmental
activism-something he called Global CPR-conservation, preservation, and restoration. He
would no doubt have thoroughly enjoyed what his son Kenneth wrote on the topic for this
issue of Sierra (Leopold's Gift).
By the end of the century, Brower was a cultural icon. He'd written three
autobiographies, been profiled by dozens of magazines, and been nominated three times for
the Nobel Peace Prize. Among his many awards was the international Blue Planet Prize in
1998, for his contributions to solving global environmental problems. He doggedly ignored
his failing health, taking his environmental gospel to acolytes around the country.
"There's a big constituency out there of people who like to eat, who like to
breathe," he told the E. F. Schumacher Society at a meeting in 1992. "We've got
to organize this group." In October his doctors told him he was dying and asked if he
wanted them to intervene to prolong his life. Brower said, "Hook me up to everything.
I've got a lot of work to do."
