Dave Brower: Tireless Environmental Champion

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BROWER: Oh no! All our 30-group coalition did was dig up the facts and figures that told the environment's side of the story. The public—a lot of little individuals—did the rest. All our lobbying, the talks we had with politicians, the ads we ran, the personal appearances we made, the televised debates, the magazine and newspaper articles—all this work—would have been wasted if the public hadn't flooded their senators and representatives with cards, letters and phone calls against the SST.

PLOWBOY: The little guy is still important then?

BROWER: Extremely important. Every single individual counts . . . and, sometimes, it doesn't take that many to make a difference. Let me give you an example.

President Nixon came up, a while back, with potentially the most important speech on population control that any president, any world leader, has ever made. He said that the earth's rapidly expanding hoards of people were on a collision course with the planet's finite resources (that was for our side) but we mustn't do anything about it that would make anyone feel upset or worried (that was for the other side). In other words, the President cancelled out. He was fishing. He wanted to find out how we felt about the population problem and he was ready to go any way the majority ruled.

The only trouble was that this particular speech was a real dud at the box office. Nobody much responded at all, for or against, one side or the other. I tested this myself on a recent speaking tour by asking everyone in my audiences who had written to thank the President for his bold stand or to call him down for his misinformed statements—or anything—to raise a hand. Maybe one in a thousand responded. That's about the ratio I got . . . and that's nothing. Bear in mind, now, that I hadn't written either. I was as guilty as all the rest, and together, our inaction had helped shape Mr. Nixon's attitude on that vital environmental problem . . . and don't you forget it!

All right. Next I'd ask the members of each audience to show me how many had cared enough about defeating the Timber Supply Act to write their Congressmen. Out of each 1,000, maybe seven hands would go up. And I'd say, "Wait a minute. Think about that. The lumber industry, the paper industry, the Forest Service, the Department of Agriculture and the President were all telling Congress 'you've got to pass it, you've got to pass it' . . . and here, out of this audience—which is a skewed group if I ever saw one, since you all came to hear a buddy environmentalist—when just a handful out of a thousand took the time to send in a letter . . . we won in Congress by a margin of 2-to-1!"

OK. Then I'd ask how many people thought we needed an SST: Not a hand. How many thought we didn't? A lotta hands. How many wrote to Washington to say so? Still a lotta hands. Thank you very much! Because this was the turnaround. This was the first time the United States citizen—just one little guy multiplied a million times over—ever stood up against billions of dollars of vested interest and said, "I don't want it bigger and faster. That's not better anymore."

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