Dave Brower: Tireless Environmental Champion

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

PLOWBOY: You're not at all boring. And after the war?

BROWER: 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, 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.

PLOWBOY: During your 17 years with the Sierra Club, you're credited with being the driving force behind that operation's growth from something like 7,000 members to approximately 77,000 dues payers. With that kind of a record behind you, why would the Sierra Club force you to "walk the plank", as you say?

BROWER: It was just honest differences of opinion between myself and the rest of the Sierra Club's board of directors. Superficial differences about how international we should get, how far we should go into publishing . . . and whether or not I was competent. Well, I was always in competent and I told them so and we pretty much had ourselves a Mexican standoff on these minor issues when we found ourselves face to face on a major matter: atomic energy.

When Pacific Gas & Electric tried to locate a nuclear reactor at Bodega Head in California, most of the Sierra Club's board of directors refused to enter the fight against the installation. That battle was fought by David Tesonen's Northern California Association to Preserve Bodega Head and Harbor and, although I was still in the Sierra Club, I helped David's group as much as I could. My action ruffled some feathers but I was allowed to remain in the organization.

Then we came to the Diablo Canyon proposal where PG&E wanted to build a major nuclear installation on the last unspoiled bit of California coast between Cape Mendocino and the Mexican border. That's a long, long stretch and there was only this one little spot left and PG&E wanted it. Actually, the company really preferred to build at Nipomo Dunes—which is beautiful and which most of the other Sierra Club directors justifiably wanted to save—and had substituted the Diablo Canyon location only at the insistence of the club. But the decision to recommend the Diablo site was made in spite of the fact that none of the voting directors had ever seen it!

I urged that the decision be delayed until the Sierra Club's executives could at least inspect Diablo Canyon before reaching a verdict on the matter, but I was outvoted. A great deal of pressure was then built up to remove me from the club and my resignation was, finally, a forced one.

PLOWBOY: Well you certainly don't seem bitter about being squeezed out of an operation that you promoted so vigorously for 17 years.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print