David Ross Brower.

• Author: Kupfer, David
• Position: Environmentalist - Interview

His life has been exceptional, inspiring, exciting, turbulent on occasion, and even a little crazy In his own crusading manner, he has built a fire under the environmental community and kept it stoked for decades. By both his example and his spirit, he is constantly reminding us that "boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."

David Ross Brower grew up in the hills of Berkeley when there still was an unobstructed view of the Golden Gate. He dropped out of the University of California in 1931. He became a mountaineer, making seventy first-ascents in Yosemite and the High Sierra. Much as he would do in the world of environmental politics later in his life, he found nineteen new routes on the sheer granite walls of Yosemite. He was an instructor in the U.S. Mountain Troops, served as a combat-intelligence officer in the Italian campaigns of World War II, and was awarded the Bronze Star. He and his wife Anne live in the home they built forty-seven years ago, overlooking the Bay Area, where they raised their four children.

For more than sixty years he has been working on a campaign in behalf of the planet, its wild places and inhabitants. A member of the Sierra Club since 1933, Brower has had a trailblazing career as a radical in the conservation movement. As an editor, filmmaker, and writer for the Club, he helped establish a broader environmental awareness in the nation. As the Club's first executive director, he transformed it from a regional into a national force in the 1950s and 1960s, seeing its membership surge from 2,000 to 77,000. He led successful campaigns to protect Dinosaur National Monument and prevent the Grand Canyon from being dammed, and helped add nine areas to the National Park system and establish the National Wilderness Preservation System. He was the instigator of the Sierra Club Foundation, Friends of the Earth International (now in more than fifty countries), the League of Conservation Voters, Environmental Liaison Center International (Nairobi), and Earth Island Institute.

The Institute, founded in 1982 with the goal of adding ecological consciousness to all spheres of human activity. supports a number of small but potent grass-roots campaigns. Brower serves as chairman of the organization's board. Its headquarters are at 300 Broadway, Suite 28, San Francisco, CA 94133. Phone: (415)788-3666.

Brower's commitment to his cause is unswerving. At 81, he maintains a wicked travel schedule, and has the passion and energy of someone half his age. He's pushed and challenged the norm of what is possible on the political battlefield, and has an uncompromising dedication to his cause. He's twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The two volumes of his recent autobiography are titled For Earth's Sake and Work in Progress.

Amory Lovins calls him the greatest living conservationist, our generation's Thoreau or Emerson. "Throughout his career, he's kept ten years ahead of everyone else," says Lovins. Futurist Hazel Henderson recently remarked, "David Brower is quite simply a unique figure in the environmental movement. I marvel at his bedrock integrity and clarity of vision and purpose."

I sat down with Brower on a sunny afternoon in late March at his Earth Island Institute office. Surrounded by stones and lichens collected on his travels around the world, he provided impassioned answers to my questions.

Q: Where do you get your inspiration?

David Brower: I think I derive my inspiration from having been a sophomore dropout from college. My wife, who graduated with a BA, thinks I've had some success because I didn't know it was impossible. I hadn't been educated to know what you couldn't do.

I like the observation that you can't put kids in a concrete box for twelve years and expect them to come out educated. That is what we are doing. We are finding various elaborate ways to stifle creativity, and we sure need creativity these days.

Q: What sort of role models have you had for the nonconformist life you've led?

Brower: I don't know anyone who follows a conformist life who can claim to be anything but mediocre. That is what average is. John Muir was one of my role models. I never met him; I was two when he died. We didn't have any conversations. I've read a lot of his material, and although some of it would be considered overwritten, it certainly moved me. Moved me into the Sierra.

I learned a lot from Aldo Leopold, whom I never met. I did meet Ansel Adams, whom I knew for fifty years and learned a lot from. And Howard Zahniser, who was...