David R. Brower Quotes

• All I know about thermal pollution is that if we continue our present rate of growth in electrical energy consumption it will simply take, by the year 2000, all our freshwater streams to cool the generators and reactors.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Pollution

• Apollo 13, as you may remember, gave us a reactor that is bubbling away right now somewhere in the Pacific. It’s supposed to be bubbling away on the moon, but it’s in the Pacific Ocean instead.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Moon

• At that time a senator who was on the Joint Committee of Atomic Energy said rather quietly, ‘You know, we’re having a little problem with waste these days.’ I didn’t know what he meant then, but I know now.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Energy

• Bring diversity back to agriculture. That’s what made it work in the first place.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Work

  Tags in Agriculture

• Even if you build the perfect reactor, you’re still saddled with a people problem and an equipment problem.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Problem

• For how many people do you think might yet stand on this planet before the sun grows cold? That’s the responsibility we hold in our hands.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Think, Responsibility

• I began working with the John Muir Institute and then started helping found Friends of the Earth organizations here and there in other countries. That pretty well brings us up to the present.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Work

  Tags in Organizations

• I believe that the average guy in the street will give up a great deal, if he really understands the cost of not giving it up. In fact, we may find that, while we’re drastically cutting our energy consumption, we’re actually raising our standard of living.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Energy

• I don’t think we have very good records about what they were thinking except, as I pointed out earlier today, that they did invent our political system.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think, Good, Political

• I sort of kept my hand in writing and went to work for the Sierra Club in ’52, walked the plank there in ’69, founded Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters after that.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Work

  Tags in Conservation

• I was actually telling people that – by harnessing the atom – we could enter a new era of unlimited power that would do away with the need to dam our beautiful streams.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Power

  Tags in Beautiful

• I will say this, – though: If it is true that fusion will put unlimited amounts of energy into our hands, then I’m worried. Our record on this score is extremely poor.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Poor

• Is the minor convenience of allowing the present generation the luxury of doubling its energy consumption every 10 years worth the major hazard of exposing the next 20,000 generations to this lethal waste?

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Convenience

• It’s like turning the space program over to the Long Island Railroad.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Like, Program

• It’s very hard for me to know what to say about fusion right now, inasmuch as it is not yet scientifically feasible. I just can’t understand how so many people are able to predict so much about something that still isn’t scientifically possible.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Think, Scientifically

• Once we open the door to the plutonium economy, we expose ourselves to absolutely terrible, horrifying risks from these people.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Economy

  Tags in People

• Perhaps most ridiculous of all is the suggestion that we ‘keep’ our radioactive garbage for the use of our descendants. This ‘solution’, I think, requires an immediate poll of the next 20,000 generations.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think, Suggestions

• Perhaps we’ll realize that each of us has not one vote but ten thousand or a million.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Vote

• ‘Realistic’ is a loaded word for me. Anyone who uses the word ‘realistic’ is all bad.

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Realistic

• Some otherwise sane scientists have seriously proposed that we tuck this deadly garbage under the edges of drifting continents but how can they be sure the moving land masses will climb over the waste and not just push it forward?

  David R. Brower

  Topics in Movies

  Tags in Scientists

David R. Brower (39)

Birth:	1st July, 1912
Death:	5th November, 2000
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Environmentalist, Mountaineer, Conservationist

About

David Ross Brower 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, the League of Conservation Voters, Earth Island Institute, North Cascades Conservation Council, and Fate of the Earth Conferences.

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