DAVID BROWER, THE MARTIN LUTHER KING OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT, DISCUSSES RULE #6: "Never Take Yourself Too Seriously"
Hope, Tanqueray Gin, and Did Moses Drop a Third Tablet? A REPLAY OF COURAGE & CHEER FOR THE HOLIDAYS, 2023 STYLE
With the world growing hotter than blazes in Old 2023 and tribal wars everywhere, it may be hard for folks to remember Rule #6 by David Brower, a man
once called “the Martin Luther King of the environmental movement.”Rule #6: “Never take yourself too seriously.”
“People want to be part of something fun,” said Brower. “It’s exciting to change the world. If you are in simply out of worry or guilt, you won’t last and normal people won’t join you. People want to live life, if love hasn’t been crushed out of them when they were children. Learning to read the Earth and saving it is fascinating stuff. Put fun in the movement to conserve, preserve, and restore, and celebrate it, and people will run to sign up.”
Brower saved the Grand Canyon, helped to give us our national seashores and wilderness areas, founded Friends of the Earth and the Earth Island Institute after serving as the first executive director of the Sierra Club, until the board, including Ansel Adams and Wallace Stegner, opposed him for opposing PG&E’s Diablo Canyon nuclear generating station. Nuclear reactors are “complex technological devices for locating earthquake faults,” he quipped, adding later with even more humor, “I was fired with the same enthusiasm I brought to the job.“ Brower was a shoot-from-the-hip visionary who early on bridged the wilderness movement to the movement for social and environmental justice, and understood that pollution extended from his friend Rachel (Silent Spring Revolution) Carson’s DDT and chemical studies up to the skies and climate change.
(The quotes in this Post come from my book with Brower. first published by HarperCollins with comments by President Jimmy Carter and biologist E.O. Wilson)
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So lighten up, HOT GLOBE™! It’s the Holidays: Hope, Humor, and Tanqueray gin. “Think Green,” as Brower would laugh after giving what John McPhee called “The Sermon.”
“We do not inherit the Earth from our fathers, we are borrowing it from our children.” Yes, it was Brower who said that first, and later, “I decided the words were too conservative for me, we’re not borrowing from our children, we’re stealing from them—and it’s not even considered to be a crime…. “
Brower was one of those rare hopeful people who didn’t just believe things would get better, he knew how to bring that about. His successes were legion. He joined the 10th Mountain Division in World War II as a confident private and mustered out into the National Guard as a major but it was his joy for life and nature that singled him out.
At age eight, Brower became “the eyes” for his mother. “She had lost her sight right after the birth of my younger brother. The cause was an inoperable brain tumor. When she regained her strength, she was first guided on a walk of two blocks to church. Then she got bold, and I got bold and together we walked from our house, about 200 feet above sea level to Grizzly Peak—at 1,759, it was the highest point in the Berkeley Hills. It was a joyful thing, that first big walk. It was my job to tell her where to put her feet in the rough places. . . .”
At age 77, Brower asked “‘To Whom It May Concern’ for a 20-year extension . . . I say borrow time without compunction. There is plenty of time later to be dead. . .when you’re my age you think you’re an oracle and that people had better listen to you. In fact, they sometimes seem to like to . . . Life can begin at 80 but you don’t need to wait that long.”
Tom Turner’s excellent treatment.
Not a big fan of religion, especially the part in Genesis 1.28 about how man should subdue the Earth, Brower once chastised Moses (though he never met him) thusly: “The problem with the Ten Commandments is that they only talk of how we’re supposed to treat each other. There’s not a bloody word about how we’re supposed to treat the Earth. We are losing it.
The other tablet must be up on the mountain still. Moses must have dropped it. Find that other tablet.”
“I would have no use for pearly gates and streets of gold if canyon wrens were not admitted.”
On the other hand, though steeped in science, (his father was a professor of geography at UC Berkeley,) he wrote, “I particularly enjoy asking my scientist friends which of their firm beliefs of today they think are most likely to be laughed at in 25 years.”
One time in San Francisco “a very young woman” asked Brower, “What level of hope do you allow yourself? I thought this was a strange question from one so young. She should have been outside. It was a sunny day and inside she had to put up with me. . . look, I said, every time you see a child come and begin to walk and learn how to talk, there it is: hope. . . I have hope, I said, that we will stop smothering the genius of children. What gives them a chance to blossom? Being outdoors. You don’t get much feeling for history, for the Earth when you spend 12 years in a concrete box trying to get educated. Under those conditions what you get educated about are concrete boxes… A cobweb in the attic gathers dust, and is ugly. But a cobweb outdoors gathers dewdrops that scintillate in the sun. Find your hope. Read the Earth. Get out. It is an extraordinary book, full color, stereo sound, wonderful aromas, the wind. It is an extraordinary planet.”
Sierra Club's new president Adam Werbach with his mentor, David Brower. In1996. Dave thought the environmental movement needed younger leaders. (Photo, Majed)
“I’ve had some big ideas in my life. I’ve made some things happen. I’ve stopped some misguided people from trashing the Earth. But the idea I believe I will be checking out on is restoration, although I have no intention of checking out any sooner than necessary,” he wrote in 1994. “I’ve grown very fond of this planet.”
“Do you have magic in you? You bet. Magic is that little genetic genius
that has been evolving for three billion years. It connects us all to each other and to everything that has come before and that still lives on the planet. That is some magic and it was formed in wilderness.“Let us begin. Let us restore the Earth. Let the mountains talk and let the rivers run.
“Once more and forever.”
Happy New Year, HOT GLOBE™-ers! Courage & Cheers!
Anne Hus Brower and David Ross Brower
PLEASE ALSO SEE THE WONDERFUL BOOK, Remembering David Brower by Kenneth Brower:
AND THE DOCUMENTARY BY SEATTLE PBS PRODUCER/DIRECTOR JOHN DE GRAAF: For Earth’s Sake