WEBVTT

00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:19.999
The following program is made possible by
financial support from the SGRS Foundation

00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:24.999
Harper-Collins Publishers Bruce
Horn and viewers like you.

00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:29.999
When you look at them on audiences that come see
you, there are an awful lot of people who are,

00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:34.999
let’s just say, they’re considerably younger
than you are. More and more people are.

00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:39.999
Well, I met there even half of
my age, (inaudible) It’s fun.

00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:44.999
Trying to talk to whatever age they audience maybe even
it’s six years old, that’s six years old a little harder

00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:49.999
to get their attention by asking where’s
the trees brain or something like that.

00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:54.999
They get interested (inaudible) ideas.
Where is the trees green? You don’t know?

00:00:55.000 --> 00:01:00.000
I don’t believe I do know. I don’t either.

00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:09.999
David Ross Brower, probably, the most
prominent environmentalist in the world,

00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:14.999
naturalist, expert mountain
climber, filmmaker, author,

00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:19.999
publisher, crusader, archenemy of
blind progress for the past 60 years

00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:24.999
no one is fought harder to
defend this earth. (inaudible)

00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:29.999
to the sharp sword of John Muir, David Brower
saved the Grand Canyon from power dams.

00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:34.999
He fought successfully to save much of the
American wilderness from saws and bulldozers.

00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:39.999
He turned the ones Chinese Sierra Club into a powerful political force
then founded Friends of The Earth and the Earth Island Institute.

00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:44.999
He has twice been nominated
for the Nobel Peace Prize.

00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:49.999
Now in his 80s, David Brower, still preaches the
gospel for the college with undimmed passion,

00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:54.999
his speaking schedule would exhaust 2-year-old. Few years
ago veteran journalist Charles Carroll paid David Brower,

00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:59.999
the highest of complements,
\"Nothing, I’ve heard from anybody,\"

00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:04.999
said Charles Carroll, \"it has affected my thinking
so deeply is what I heard from David Brower.\"

00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:09.999
From his reputation you might expect to
find David Brower is stern and serious

00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:14.999
Old Testament prophet warning
of impending catastrophe.

00:02:15.000 --> 00:02:19.999
Indeed, the warnings are there but the message
is delivered gently and salted with humor.

00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:24.999
I’m Scott Simon host of Weekend Edition Saturday on
National Public Radio. I had the opportunity to meet

00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:29.999
David Brower for the first time just
a week before his 83rd birthday

00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:34.999
just after (inaudible) his newest book Let the Mountains Talk,
Let the Rivers Run. We spoke for several hours in his backyard

00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:39.999
with airplanes buzzing overhead
and the temperature is soaring

00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:44.999
over a 100 in the shade. Story I’ve been wanting
to ask you, we’re on an airplane flight inevitably

00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:49.999
and bored, you counted

00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:54.999
every chew that you made while
you were consuming airline meal.

00:02:55.000 --> 00:02:59.999
Airline lunch, yes, I don’t think anybody else, I’ve
been asking my audience is anybody else ever done this,

00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:04.999
nobody has ever done this. So I guess, I’m unique.
I wanted to count the number of times that had

00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:09.999
to chew of an airline
lunch and it was 2,000.

00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:14.999
What was the lunch, do you remember?
I can’t remember what the lunch was

00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:19.999
but once these days is much less I could probably get by
(inaudible) what elders doing these days for maybe less.

00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:24.999
And I just go for the drinks
and you don’t have to chew

00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:29.999
but the dinner was 4,000. I chew
an arbitrary 1,000 for breakfast

00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:34.999
just to think about what we have to do
daily and that 7,000 times a day roughly

00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:39.999
we have to chew. And that’s…
When I could think about it,

00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:44.999
we just do it, and we don’t think much about our tongue, and I think
it’s important to think about the tongue because in between each chew

00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:49.999
the tongue has to put food on
each side and here the tongue

00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:54.999
is just tender little bit between
this very tough tooth enamel.

00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:59.999
So it puts the food there and has to get the hell out of
the way before it bite, and it does, almost all your life

00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:04.999
your tongue manages to avoid being bitten, not always.
No, only few exemptions and just flashing your mind.

00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:09.999
But it is amazing and we don’t even think about that
with this hard work and tongue has to go through it,

00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:14.999
it’s extremely well-trained, and you
can go through the whole system

00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:19.999
once you begin to analyze the various things that
are going on in your body from looking at things

00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:24.999
to just to breathing and when
just think about what it takes

00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:29.999
to tell you it’s time to draw the
next bread. And I didn’t think about

00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:34.999
that till I was looking at a video, but I
was supposed to know about my pacemaker

00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:39.999
and here’s the little micro photograph of
the capillaries going through the heart

00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:44.999
and here come the little red cells and
they come in loaded with carbon dioxide,

00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:49.999
they dump it, they pick up oxygen, and go around for another
round. And I don’t know where we’re taught them how to do that,

00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:54.999
but they do it all the time, and I’m very grateful for
it. And I’ve got the number from a friend of mine

00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:59.999
who is a former president of the American Chemical
Society Alan Nixon that we can do a 100,000

00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:04.999
different chemical reactions within us.

00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:09.999
And here it goes on automatically
not to think about it,

00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:14.999
and the instructions, I just go out on the instructions about all the
structure, all the things that these structures are supposed to do,

00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:19.999
including our ability to love and to
have compassion to hate and to fight,

00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:24.999
feel aggressive, all those instructions are contained in
a little bit of genetic material in a sperm and an egg.

00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:29.999
That was the beginning of each person
who ever lived and with roughly

00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:34.999
100,000 billion people who ever
lived that minimum genetic material

00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:39.999
would fit in a sphere a sixth
of an inch in diameter

00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:44.999
and that figure I had checked at Stanford University
so it must be correct but that’s good compression.

00:05:45.000 --> 00:05:49.999
I don’t notice how this is
all coded but we operate

00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:54.999
on the basis of that, that’s the
miracle or magic of life if you will,

00:05:55.000 --> 00:05:59.999
and I think we ought to respect it and celebrate it relevancy how many
chances are we can take with it. You have a pacemaker, of course.

00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:04.999
And thank God for that. I do, and I’m
grateful for it, and I’m also grateful

00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:09.999
for the fact that my first 82 years I
didn’t need one. All the technique,

00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:14.999
the high-tech it was needed to keep my heart going
at the right rate, most of the time was built in,

00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:19.999
and then there was atrial fibrillation and there’s
the signal is split to go from one part of the heart

00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:24.999
to the other saying now’s the time to be, and it
was missing, the instruction from time to time.

00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:29.999
I learned that the brain is not very friendly but
if it doesn’t get oxygen for more than two seconds,

00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:34.999
it takes steps. And the step that it took,

00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:39.999
this particular morning,
after (inaudible) 1995

00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:44.999
was that I fell into the fireplace and tried to move
the grate with my pace and didn’t hurt the grate

00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:49.999
at all but a little bit and then they call the
doctors and they took me out of the hospital

00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:54.999
and said that I never gonna need
a pacemaker, and I got one,

00:06:55.000 --> 00:06:59.999
I was out of there in two days and told
the nurse that she could tell the press

00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:04.999
that now I’m gonna be able to keep up with
myself. So this little bit of high-tech chip

00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:09.999
knows what I should have known myself and
if it senses there too long of pause

00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:14.999
it gives my heart a jerk, \"let’s beat.\" And that’s
impressive that a chip could know all that,

00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:19.999
but it’s more impressive still is that the battery that
operates that they say it will lasts from 8 to 12 years,

00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:24.999
and I’m gonna get my money’s worth.

00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:29.999
It is impressive technology, but I
got to tell you when I first heard

00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:34.999
that you had a pacemaker I thought about
the story of you with a butterfly

00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:39.999
when you were a youngster. Let’s put it this
way, less expertise and rather more naivety,

00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:44.999
you made some attempt to sort of interpose yourself in
the future of this butterfly with successful results.

00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:49.999
I used to (inaudible), I get the eggs

00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:54.999
and caterpillars and they feed on
(inaudible) and I’d bring them home

00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:59.999
and watch them grow up former chrysalis.
And this is the one of the big lessons

00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:04.999
I’ve learned it. After
a period as chrysalis

00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:09.999
the butterfly is fully asleep
when the chrysalis is ready,

00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:14.999
there’s a little slip in its
shell and out pops an antenna

00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:19.999
and another one and after some effort the butterfly
climbs out that its wings just all very compressed,

00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:24.999
they’re just about like fingers
that are gonna spread out,

00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:29.999
and the abdomen is just full of
juice, and the thing that happens

00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:34.999
is that the butterfly crawls out, hangs
upside down on a branch something as sort,

00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:39.999
pumps the fluid into the
wings which expand,

00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:44.999
it takes about a half hour to dry, and it’s
ready to fly. And I have been very helpful,

00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:49.999
I was going once, I saw it took a long time for
them to get out of the crystal once they split it.

00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:54.999
So another chrysalis, once they’d been split, I opened the rest
of the way and the butterfly has climbed out much more easily.

00:08:55.000 --> 00:08:59.999
You opened it with your fingers.
Yes, but very carefully,

00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:04.999
but I didn’t injured butterfly, I thought.
But I had removed is ventral triggering,

00:09:05.000 --> 00:09:09.999
that the butterfly needed that
exertion of climbing out,

00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:14.999
it had to do it itself to trigger the flow

00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:19.999
of the juice or fluid from the abdomen to the
wing. And everyone I helped there was no trigger,

00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:24.999
the abdomen didn’t release its
fluid, the wings never expanded,

00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:29.999
and they just crawl around and died. So
that was to me a very important lesson.

00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:34.999
That’s the system. If it’s been
working, it’s been tested,

00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:39.999
don’t mess with it. (inaudible) celebrate
it, but don’t try to improve on something

00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:44.999
that has been tested for billions of year.

00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:49.999
I still have very fond of butterflies, and I can pretty
much identify them by their flight migrate distance

00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:54.999
because I learned how, I was watching
butterflies when my mind was still receptive,

00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:59.999
and I remembered it. Well, I learned
about them what their habits were.

00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:04.999
And I guess, this is one of the things that
gave me a good start and understanding

00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:09.999
some of the ecological laws of the earth
and how things working, how they don’t.

00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:14.999
[music]

00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:19.999
The boy who loved butterflies

00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:24.999
grew up in Berkeley, California. He still lives
there. His mother lost her sight when he was eight,

00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:29.999
(inaudible) let her through the nearby
hills carefully describing the beauty that

00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:34.999
she could not see for herself. His
father to was happiest out of doors,

00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:39.999
each summer he took his family on camping
trips to Yosemite and the High Sierra.

00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:44.999
[music]

00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:49.999
With its tempestuous waterfalls

00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:54.999
and towering cliffs, Yosemite was David
Brower’s eve going him back again and again.

00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:59.999
He still comes here in every season seeking
a new, the all he first experienced

00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:04.999
in the summer of 1918. Still grateful
that a century ago farsighted people

00:11:05.000 --> 00:11:09.999
thought to preserve this place
for all people and for all time.

00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:14.999
Yosemite made David Brower a true
believer in the national park idea.

00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:19.999
It also made him a mountain climber, one of the very best of his
era while he was still in his 20s, he scaled vertical walls

00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:24.999
that others thought impossible, and he made
dozens of first ascends of Sierra peaks,

00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:29.999
but his most famous climb wasn’t in
Yosemite. Shiprock is a giant monolith,

00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:34.999
rising boldly from the New Mexico desert.
Some of the world’s best climbers had

00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:39.999
and tried to conquer it all of failed.
Many said Shiprock would never be climbed

00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:44.999
but in 1939, David Brower and three
companions proved them wrong.

00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:49.999
Fresh from his victory over Shiprock,
David Brower joined the Army.

00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:54.999
When America entered World War II,

00:11:55.000 --> 00:11:59.999
expert climbers were needed to train a division of mountain
troops. At Seneca Rock in the hills of West Virginia,

00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:04.999
Lieutenant Brower taught 100s of soldiers to climb
and film them as they gain confidence day by day.

00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:09.999
In the army, he dreamed of
a woman named Anne Hus,

00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:14.999
they’ve met briefly just before the war after
only a short correspondence David proposed.

00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:19.999
Since she’d never even so much as kissed him and was skeptical,
but she consented, they got married on May 1st first 1943.

00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:24.999
Shortly, afterwards, they went to
a movie, it was their first date.

00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:29.999
David Brower and the mountain
troops fought combat

00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:34.999
on river ridge near Italian appenines.
Scaling a sheer rock face,

00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:39.999
they took its German defenders by surprise. The Germans
thought no one could climb the ridge that way.

00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:44.999
[music]

00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:49.999
After the war, the Brower settled down
in Berkeley and began raising children

00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:54.999
three boys and girl. But Anne felt
David’s real family was the Sierra Club,

00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:59.999
founded in 1892 by John Muir, the Sierra
Club half a century later still had only

00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:04.999
2,000 members but the club ran
an extensive outings program,

00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:09.999
encouraging people to explore, and protect beautiful
places. Even before the war, David Brower

00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:14.999
was one of its most active members. He
organized, lead, sometimes photographed

00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:19.999
Sierra Club high trips, help to write and edit the club bulletin.
And he shared the Sierra Club commitment to conservation.

00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:24.999
\"If you’ve enjoyed this wild country,\" he said,
\"time and again around Sierra Club campfires,

00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:29.999
you have a duty to preserve and
defend it for future generations.\"

00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:34.999
In 1952, the Sierra Club made David Brower,
its first paid executive director.

00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:39.999
He immediately brought the
club some national attention.

00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:44.999
At that time the Bureau of
Reclamation was planning

00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:49.999
a major hydroelectric project on the
Colorado River, and its tributaries,

00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:54.999
two of the dams would have flooded this
valley and Dinosaur National Monument.

00:13:55.000 --> 00:13:59.999
The most conservationists deplored but they
perceived as an assault on the national park system

00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:04.999
they thought the dams could not be stopped,
but David Brower changed their minds

00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:09.999
organizing a major lobbying effort that
forced the dam builders to retreat.

00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:14.999
It was a stunning victory, David Brower
now believes it came at a terrible cost

00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:19.999
a compromise he never needed to accept.

00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:24.999
A dam was built on the Colorado

00:14:25.000 --> 00:14:29.999
and it flooded a beautiful gorge called Glen
Canyon. I knew the dam shouldn’t be built.

00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:34.999
We had the votes to stop it in
the house of representatives,

00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:39.999
we had the arguments, the advice from
engineers who could give it independently

00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:44.999
or anonymously without
attribution, very good engineers.

00:14:45.000 --> 00:14:49.999
And when the executive committee of the Sierra
Club wired me when I was in Washington saying

00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:54.999
is the dams and dinosaurs are taken out of this Colorado project
(inaudible) pull out will suffer opposition to the project.

00:14:55.000 --> 00:14:59.999
And I didn’t do anything about that

00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:04.999
and so that’s still bothers me that I had the
conviction that that dam should not be built,

00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:09.999
and I think I could have argued
tremendous thing with the opposition,

00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:14.999
and it just happened that the keystone
to the opposition was the Sierra Club

00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:19.999
if the keystone out or collapsed
and when the project went through

00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:24.999
and some of them most magnificent

00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:29.999
senior (inaudible) was destroyed.
I didn’t do it, I didn’t move,

00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:34.999
and my conviction wasn’t
enough to get me off my butt.

00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:39.999
And that’s my greatest regret, I
guess, I can’t get rid of it.

00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:44.999
Early in David Brower’s career, he realized the power
of media in winning public support for conservation.

00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:49.999
He learned filmmaking and produced documentaries
capturing the magic of America’s wild places.

00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:54.999
Up for the tree reaches high for the cloud,

00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:59.999
where the flower takes the
summer wind the beauty,

00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:04.999
and the summer rain too.

00:16:05.000 --> 00:16:09.999
They wanted to discover for themselves,

00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:14.999
the wildness of the ages have made perfect.

00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:19.999
This film helped convince the reluctant
Congress to create a national park

00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:24.999
in Washington’s North Cascades. In
1960, David Brower found a new way

00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:29.999
to promote the Sierra Club cause, he published
the first of more than 30 exhibit format books

00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:34.999
combining the photos of masters like (inaudible)
and Eliot Porter with fine literature

00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:39.999
and poetry, publishers said such big
and expensive books wouldn’t sell,

00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:44.999
but they did sell, and they brought thousands
of new members into the Sierra Club.

00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:49.999
I think they had quite a bit to do with changing
the American attitude as they sold very well,

00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:54.999
some of them particularly well,
and they got reviewed very well.

00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:59.999
And one of them that I’m particularly proud of
is the book where Ansel Adams, Nancy Newhall,

00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:04.999
collaborated and the book called this
is the American Earth. This point,

00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:09.999
I think, I would change the title because I think there are a lot of people
who think that this isn’t the American Earth but it was a very good book,

00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:14.999
it put what we’re trying to do in the
conservation movement in a broad context

00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:19.999
and that was the beginning, I think,
of the modern conservation movement.

00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:24.999
David Brower led the Sierra Club
in to fight after fight winning

00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:29.999
new national parks and building support for the national
Wilderness Act signed by President Johnson in 1964.

00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:34.999
The act set aside millions
of acres of pristine land

00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:39.999
as off-limits to development. David Brower says
that wilderness holds answers to questions

00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:44.999
we still haven’t learned to ask. He
believes we owe our descendants,

00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:49.999
the chance to see something of the
world as it was before we came along.

00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:54.999
Why doesn’t David Brower live in the
middle of a howling wilderness?

00:17:55.000 --> 00:17:59.999
I like wilderness for dessert, and I think that a
city is a very important invention of humanity,

00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:04.999
and it does give you a critical mass of a great
many things that I think are important to life,

00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:09.999
certainly, important to my life. But I
think that (inaudible) had it right

00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:14.999
owe unto them that build house
to house and like field to field

00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:19.999
till there may be no place me no place or there
may be placed alone in the midst of the Earth.

00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.999
And the other place where
you could be placed alone

00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:29.999
and miss the Earth is not a bad idea, I wouldn’t want to
stay there alone, but I’d like to know if it’s there.

00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:34.999
I’m surprised going through
your writing style, I…

00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:39.999
You love cities. Yeah, you don’t think there’s
anything wicked by definition of rather city,

00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:44.999
suburbs you don’t seem to feel so keen about.
Well, the suburbs are part of the scatteration

00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:49.999
that I want cities to be coherent again,
and I want boundaries around cities

00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:54.999
so that there are limits to how
far they go, and the suburbs

00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:59.999
that the automobile is driven
as into not a good idea.

00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:04.999
And I’m just too mindful of what I’ve seen
since I’ve been able to fly across the country

00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:09.999
that was… I didn’t started doing
that I guess till the 50s.

00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:14.999
But in this 40-year period to see what
was raw land, what was forested land,

00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.999
what isn’t anymore is not encouraging.
I don’t like to see this

00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:24.999
is… I guess, the spread of the cancer.

00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:29.999
Anyhow, that’s the whole business of
travelling it is rather entertain,

00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:34.999
you set up in the air for a while, and you
come down the license plates are different

00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:39.999
so you know you’re somewhere else because that’s about the
only difference. (inaudible) homogenize the rest of America.

00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:44.999
We’ve read accounts of people over the years
who repaired to the wilderness for inspiration

00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.999
for solace solitude
reflection, who hear voices.

00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:54.999
When you’ve been in wilderness,
and you’ve been in mountains,

00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.999
wild areas have you heard voices heard
things, things been revealed to you?

00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
I think other people have heard things.
I’ve heard my wakeup call in yodel,

00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.999
I’m in that quite and because I haven’t been
in that quite, I hadn’t heard these voices.

00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.999
And one of the things that I also in the
Sierra we mountain machine (inaudible)

00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.999
yet to see one probably because I’m too
noisy. \"Here comes Brower, get out of here.\"

00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
And something like that, I’ve never seen a mountain
lion. You sound like a bad man to go camping with.

00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
I’ve never seen a wolverine within far of the
(inaudible) I’ve liked to see a wolverine

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
because as I understand from all this years you
knew about these things that’s the only mammal

00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
that doesn’t get arthritis, and I’d like
to check with it. How did you do it?

00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
During the mid 60s David Brower fought the battle that made him
famous. He took on the Bureau of Reclamation again this time

00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
over a plan to put power dams in the
heart of the Grand Canyon itself.

00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
Politicians lined up behind the plant,
proponents suggested that a reservoir

00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
in the canyon would offer boaters easier
access to which undeniable glories.

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
David Brower responded with a vengeance.
He took out ads in major newspapers

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
denouncing the plan it resulting torrent public
opinion swap the Bureau of Reclamation again,

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
and the Grand Canyon and the
Colorado River steel runs free.

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
In 1969, David Brower who stood on the
pinnacle of success, honored around the world

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
for saving the Grand Canyon. At the same time, he
faced opposition from inside the Sierra Club itself.

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
Some members of the club’s board were
troubled by David Brower uncompromising

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
and aggressive political style. Brower
and the Board bought over finance,

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
send overboard support for a nuclear
power plant that Brower opposed.

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
Finally, he was forced to resign his executive director
of the club, and he wasted no time on tears of regret.

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
Immediately, formed a new organization
called Friends of the Earth

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
it was the era of the first Earth Day when
Americans were increasingly becoming aware

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
of threats to the environment of air pollution,
oil spills, the population explosion.

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
David Brower lead Friends of the Earth head-on
into the new area. He challenged nuclear power

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
and waged an unsuccessful campaign against the Alaska
pipeline. Lots of people will look back on that

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
and think that that was a wonderful
feat of audacious engineering,

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
and we’ve grown up in a
better world because of it.

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
Not, of course, I would have
to challenge that Alaska oil

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
is essentially gone now and there’s
nothing quite like that resource up

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
there there’s something a lot smaller and they want to
spoil the Alaska National Wildlife range to get at it

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
what has oil than for us wonderful things

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
and horrible thing. It
has destroyed cities,

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
and we all know what happens when we
drive a car and what they are doing

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
to the land, the air, the
water, other forms of life,

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
the inventory of energy resources
itself, it was not a very bright move

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
to see how fast we could
use up something that took

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
500 million years to form, and this point isn’t
quite getting through because the marketplace

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
doesn’t put on gasoline prices should

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
pay for the damage it does. That’s a
very hard figure to come up with.

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
And you wouldn’t want to think about
as we heard it. It’d be too high.

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
What do you feel about the argument that’s often
given over the years that science will provide

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
that way out for us that we seem to
be at the curve of the crest of using

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
the finite supply of oil and gas

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
that science will come up with something
else? Well, since I’m talking to by

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
some virtue of my pacemaker which is a scientific
achievement, I can’t attack science with full vigor.

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
And I’d never any vigor at all
without science, but at this point,

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
I still want to attack science because it is
creating problems as well as solving them

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
and getting what’s happening to our
own bodies, our own immune systems

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
are not able to handle some of the things
that they were able to handle and with

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
that our immune system are in bad
shape, aids will tell us that.

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
And without the diversity of life is
provided as a lot of the medicines

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
we have made may already have
destroyed in our record destruction

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
of other species of land of plants and
animals, we may have destroyed cure.

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
We’ve identified 1.4 million
species of plants and animals,

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
and we’re losing those at our own hand a thousand
times faster than evolution is editing them out.

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
And I don’t think that’s a moral thing
to do. What about those who say

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
that the within reason the disappearance of
species, particularly, one if it has a long

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
scientific unfamiliar name, that’s unfamiliar to
many Americans is also part of the master plan

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
of this planet that species disappear all
at a time. Yes, it is. To point out again

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
that there’s no reason for us to disappear
them a thousand times faster than nature does,

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
and that’s what we’re doing, and that’s
wrong. It’s just simply out and out wrong,

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
and we don’t have to do it, we have to have
a new respect for this diversity of life

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
and prepare to celebrate it rather than
to eradicate it. But, for example,

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
it’s relatively easy to interest people in the
face of the harp seal to snail darter are harder.

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
Harp seals referring
cuddly and look that way

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
and have very big brown eyes or whatever
the color is and snail darter nobody

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
would like to take a snail darter
home for pet hardly anybody

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
and that this is one of the problems that there are
some little ugly that are still quite important.

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
And I don’t think newts are very handsome

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
but we in our own park right across the home
where I live we closed a certain road there

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
at noon time when they’re moving in
search of mates they cross the road

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
as they’re not fast enough to be anything
but road kill. So we just closed the road.

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
We should explain you’re not being political at
all area. Those are newts I’m friendly toward.

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
Trick question, is there is there a species
you can think of that’s not endangered?

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
At this point, no. That since we’re
endangering the life force on the planet,

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
we’re all endangered,
particularly, our own species.

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
And so I want a little sticker that goes on the
mirror you are looking at an endangered species.

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
We are an endangered species the extent that a combination of
things that we’re doing what we call civilization, at this point,

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
are destroying our very life support
system. And you can’t live without it.

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
And this point is a little hard to sell, but it
needs to be sold as the alarms need to be sounded.

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
And as we get on with our
science and technology

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
and have more and more people
advancing \"more and more solutions,\"

00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
we need to be more and more concerned

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
about anticipating consequences.
And by anticipate, that means,

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
you do something to fend them off, you don’t just accept
them as we’re getting into all kinds of consequences

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
that we hadn’t thought of right now, there’s
something like a $200 billion or $300 billion

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
price charge on cleaning up our nuclear
waste. It’s a very interesting figure,

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
I wonder how they’re put a figure on
something they don’t know how to do yet.

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
And that this again is part
of the frailty of science.

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
Since the first Earth Day, David Brower who’s been a keynote
speaker at hundreds of conferences and other gatherings,

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
on thinking he never tires of doing this putting human
pride in its place. I understand you can do this.

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
Can you compress the entire history of
the world into a single week for us?

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
No problem at all. That’s 4.5
billion years down to seven,

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
six days of creation. So the
earth begins Sunday midnight,

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
no life until Tuesday noon, when
life comes aboard, in great numbers,

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
millions upon millions of
species arrived millions leave.

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
By Saturday morning at 7 there’s been
enough chlorophyll now the fossil fuels

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
can begin to form. At 4 in the afternoon
the great reptiles come on to stage,

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
at 9:30 they’re offstage,
but they had a long run,

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
nothing like us till three minutes before
midnight and no homo sapiens still

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
a half minute before midnight.
There’s no agriculture

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
until 10 seconds before midnight.

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
Christ was born quarter of a second before midnight.
For Buddha third of a second he got here earlier.

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
The Industrial Revolution afforded
them a second before midnight,

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
the discovery of oil in 80th of a second, the
splitting of an atom at 200th of a second,

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
and now it’s midnight and what we’re
going to try to do extrapolate

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
all these last things just
happen in fractions of a second.

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
There are people in this in
this country, religious people,

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
who believe that as a species we are
destined to govern and to do this planet

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
that we were given a specific
God imprinted mandate

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
to make all the creatures of the field
and forests facilities of our lives.

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
Well, I’ll offend some people with this,
but I would like to call for the author,

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
and I don’t think God wrote it. I think there’s
some other authors and even Genesis is written,

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
for example, the population of
the Earth is about 50 million,

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
when Christ was born 200 million, and now it’s 5.5
billion and counting it’s a different ball game,

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
and the whole idea of multiply and
replenish the earth and so do it,

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
I don’t think would rewritten today.

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
The whole idea the arrogance of it considering
that we were so recent of species to arrive

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
that the dinosaurs were here for
millions and millions of years

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
and homo sapiens hasn’t been here
yet for a quarter of a million.

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
And here we think we’re the hot stuff.
Small-world story,

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
you quoted speech at Adlai
Stevenson delivered in 1965

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
now known as the Spaceship Earth speech.

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
You know what I’m talking about? Oh, yes. Yeah.
I’ve been using that ever since I first heard it.

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
I put it in print several time in Sierra
Club bulletin I put it up some photographs.

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
And I used it almost every time I have
anything to say in some other country.

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
I was there that day with, I guess,

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
my sixth grade class, Pioneer court
when he delivered the speech,

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
they brought us down for a field trip. Only
time I ever heard Governor Stevenson speak

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
and it wasn’t on television, we call
them Governor Stevenson in Illinois.

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
It was known as the Spaceship
Earth speech but what’s the…

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
How does it go? (inaudible) if I can get you
to give me that quote. \"We travel together,

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
passengers on a little space ship, dependent
on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil.

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
All committed for our safety
to its security and peace,

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
preserved from annihilation only by
the care, the work, and, I will say,

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
the love we give our fragile craft.
We cannot maintain it half fortunate,

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
half miserable, half
confident, half despairing,

00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
half slave to the ancient enemies of man
half free in a liberation of resources

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
undreamed of until this day. No craft,

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
no crew can travel safely with
such vast contradictions.

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
On their resolution depends
the survival of us all.\"

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
And I think it was extremely powerful and
extremely good. And I wish there were

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
15 feet high in the Oval Office and that
every president was required to memorize it,

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
and do something about it. and if the President’s
subsequent to Adlai Stevenson’s attempt to be president

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
had done something about it had heard when he
was talking about, and it made this our policy,

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
it would be quite a different
world now from what it is.

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
How many people can live comfortably on this Earth?
The point is not so much the number of people

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
but what they are doing to the earth.
And the 50 years since World War II,

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
the United States has
used up more resources

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
than all the rest of the world
in all previous history.

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
See, you think of it less as a matter of population
control than in a sense appetite control. It’s both.

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
I don’t wanna give preference to either.
We got too many people, we have appetite

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
for consuming resources, destroying
resources, destroying the base.

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
And one of the things that’s occurred to me as I’ve aged is
that I’m not so concerned about the non-renewable resources,

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
we seem to be able to find
substitutes for those,

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
I’m very concerned about what we’re doing
to the renewable resources. Number one,

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
soil and without soil we can’t
make use of the sun’s energy.

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
That’s the ultimate reactor, it makes green thing
we eat green things, other things eat green things,

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
we eat the other things this is the basis
for us. And then in the last 20 years,

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
we’ve created enough new man-made
desert, we human beings have done

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
that to equal all our crop land in China
and have lost enough soil by other means,

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
pavement, condominiums,
reservoirs, continuing

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
and accelerating erosion by wind and water and application
of chemicals without or knowing quite what we’re doing.

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
(inaudible) whole combination
we’ve lost enough cropland

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
to equal the cropland in India. So to
sum it up, 20 years we lost the seventh

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
of the world’s productivity while the population
doubles. And there isn’t an institution

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
I can think of is considered
logical and reasonable

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
and conservative that
attacks that achievement.

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
We can’t continue that, absolutely, cannot,

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
and we can’t get our institutions to recognize that fact. And
that’s the corporations and the governments and the universities.

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
They can rethink this. And they’ve
got enough evidence there

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
to justify their rethinking and to go to work
on different approaches how they operate.

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
And I just like, I love Paul Hawkens book

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
The Ecology of Commerce where he goes
into this and gives us the example

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
of the three (inaudible) company which in a
period of 15 years before he wrote his book

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
it decided they were gonna redesign every
process they had and cut down their waste,

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
they made an enormous cotton waste
about half, and they made $537 million

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
mark profit in at 15-year period from doing
it right rather than doing it wrong.

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
Let me get your response to this. You know
there are people in developing nations

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
who hear those of us in the West talk about
suppressing the appetite of development

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
and even mentioned something like population
control, who don’t like to hear that,

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
they figure it’s all a way of us evading and
turning over the franchise of the world to them,

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
they will say, \"You folks, have gotten rich and comparatively
fatten wealthy and now you want to bring up the doors

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
and close it so that we won’t even get
our chance to be that comfortable.\"

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
We cannot continue to use up

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
the environmental capital where we’ve used it up, offer ourselves without
making enemies that is I don’t think other countries enjoy our achievement

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
in this as we’re ripping them
all or whatever it may be,

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
and I don’t think we need to do it, and I think
that we’re going to have to suffer a great

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
unfortunate consequences if we continue.
And one of the things

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
we can do to help offset this is to
invest in the countries we ripped off

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
so that we can help make up there
what we’ve taken from them.

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
So that they have a better chance to
live out their lives where they are,

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
I think most people would prefer to
live at home rather than to migrate.

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
And I think one specific example which I
learned from the environmental minister

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
of Mexico at the Rio Conference,
the world summit. He said,

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
\"If you’d like Mexico to fish where
tuna without killing dolphins,

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
help us invest in the equivalent that
makes that possible.\" We haven’t done it.

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
Now I think that that might cost us a
little bit to make that investment,

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
but I had a standard router question
what is it going to cost us if we don’t.

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
And this is what budget makers seem incapable of
thinking what will it cost if you don’t do it.

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
Some people have taken
satisfaction nowadays in the idea

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
that at least we’re not doing as much
damage to the environment as we used to

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
because there’s been greater recognition that may or may not be
true which is one of the reasons why am I’m running it by you.

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
But you seem to think that it’s
not enough just to slow down,

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
we have to do a u-turn, what would
making that you turn entail for us?

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
I think the main thing that will entail is just reforming
the economists of the world so that they will learn how

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
to calculate the cost of the earth of the cost
of the future of some of the recommendations

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
and they’re not very good at that yet.
Well, explain that to us.

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
Well, the cost of the earth is a little hard to
figure out. What is a tree worth? Is it worth simply

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
which you can get out of the tree for pulp or two-by-fours
or whatever you’re going to use that word for?

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
Also they have other functions that are not
measured and I claim it as a good money

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
that the marketplace omits consideration

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
of the tree locks up carbon as important as we’re
worried about the carbon content of the atmosphere,

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
it breathes oxygen, and those that
was a breather grateful for that,

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
it hold soil in place, and it controls
the flow and the quality of water,

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
it’s a good habitat for
lots of things, looks nice,

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
almost all those values are
of no value in the economist

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
economist measuring almost
worthwhile and what its worth,

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
no value in the marketplace. But, of course, it has an
extraordinary valuable without it we’re in deep trouble,

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
and the economists should learn how
to do this, and they’re resisting.

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
And I think they should stop resisting and
help us so that the marketplace will advise us

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
instead of misinforming us.

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
In 1990 David Brower wrote For
Earth’s Sake his autobiography.

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
Five years later, he wrote another book Let The Mountains
Talk, Let The Rivers Run. It’s an unusual book

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
in one particular respect, it’s the first book
ever printed entirely on tree-free paper.

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
Let me ask you few
questions about your wood.

00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.999
Wood, wood, paper. For
example, your latest book

00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.999
is not printed on paper per se that paper made out
of wood. Just the jacket, I’m sorry about the jacket

00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:09.999
that’s on paper. And paper
made from wood pulp.

00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:14.999
The other papers major him
canal kenaf, K-E-N-A-F.

00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.999
And that kenaf is a relative of the
hibiscus plant, and it will grow better

00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.999
pulp faster than a tree will, it’ll grow
among other places where tobacco is grown,

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.999
it doesn’t take chlorine to bleach it,
so you don’t have the problem of dioxin.

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
There are other problems you don’t have. More
expensive than paper for the moment isn’t it?

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
Right now… Than the wood and pulp paper. the way
the market base puts a price on it that is about,

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
for my book, I understand it was
20% more expensive than paper,

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
and I’d like to see telephone books on it, and I’d like to
sections of The New York Times and I saw Los Angeles Times

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
started on this, it will work. It could
make a difference if, for example,

00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
the Manhattan phone directory people said,
\"This year we print on kenaf.\" Yes, right now

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
the number I have is in my book that
one tree out of five is cut for pulp.

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
So if we didn’t have to cut those that will be
one tree out of five we’d never have to cut.

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
And that would be pretty good
for the other values of trees.

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
You know, I’d like to see that happen. One thing,
people of my age, who have children have noticed

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
is that their children over the past
generation have grown up, for example,

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
recycling almost instinctively because
it’s just (inaudible) twain to the way

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
many communities live these days. I mean,
it strikes me that many youngsters

00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
who are now adolescence and college age students have grown up with some
of the ideas that you have to struggle to have accepted certitudes,

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
they’ve grown up with concepts you had to
argue about as verities in your lives.

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
And, of course, their
problem and my problem

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
and everybody else’s problem is that these remedies
take place in part because there are regulations,

00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.999
there are laws regulations, traditions,
and call for this to happen.

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
And we’re having a major erosion
on this right now that the people

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
who like to be told what to do, they like to think
of what to do themselves, but we have regulations

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
because they weren’t thinking very well.
And we’re getting a lot of distraction.

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
You know, there are millions of Americans who have
the idea that if they try and repaint the house

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
someone’s going to complain that it’s killing the
snail darter. I know this is a hyperbolic view

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
but there are many Americans who feel their
kind of their freedom has been infringed

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
upon by environmental regulations. I think

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
that they’ve got to redefine freedom.
For example,

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
I smoked for a good 25 years and I
was getting up to two packs a day

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
and maybe a little worse than that and out
of fright quit. And now remember one,

00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
after I’d quit smoking I became very sensitive, you know,
objectionably sort of people who are still smoking.

00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
And that’s something we’re
still smoking in airplanes,

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
and I was in a the smoking section and
somebody lit up and took by my count 10 drags

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
to that cigarette before the cigarette light through
so that’s all that person’s smoking cigarette,

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
I was smoking it the entire time because
the smoke was coming over my way.

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
Now here’s where you get into regulation,

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
you want freedom but whose freedom do you
encroach upon is there no regulations.

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
And I think we just need to look at
all the regulations and our freedoms

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
and who was encroached upon by whom
to get a better understanding of

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
that to find freedom without taking it from someone
else. If we analyze our freedom in this country,

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.999
we began to realize how many people
around the world are not free

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
because of other resources that
they needed for their freedom

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
that we have here are for our binge
that would help us possibly trade

00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
in some of our hubris on compassion.

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.999
Today, David Brower lead another organization
the Earth Island Institute in San Francisco

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
an umbrella for dozens of
environmental groups. Nearly, 80%

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
of Americans described themselves as
environmentalists, Brower worries about recent

00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.999
political setbacks of movement and he’s desperate to begin
the influential scene (inaudible) only a heart beat ago.

00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.999
You’ve suggested over the years
at the environmental movement

00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:29.999
could benefit from maybe

00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:34.999
a little bit more boldness and a
little bit more of a sense of humor.

00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:39.999
Well, I think boldness is quite important

00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.999
and that I like that quote from (inaudible) that
I was given to me by an old maneuver friend.

00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:49.999
Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it,
boldness has genius, power, and magic in it,

00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.999
and it’s almost my religion at this point.
I think that too many people

00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
are too anxious for access, they want
to be seen as reasonable, creditable.

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.999
And I can understand that, but then
that softens are attacked too much

00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.999
and they become victims to letters
described by my good friend

00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
from Texas in the middle of the road, it’s got nothing
in it, but the yellow lines of dead armadillos,

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.999
we’ve got to be near the edge of the road, we’ve
got to be bold, we got to try new things,

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.999
and we also have to make sure
there’s some fun in this business.

00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
My standard question is what do environmentalist and I can
list some other people in the Bible I have in common,

00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
no humor. And there’s

00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.999
got to be more fun in the
environmental business.

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.999
Have you worried over the years
that a movement that (inaudible)

00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:49.999
like the environmentalism movement if
you please picked up some currency

00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:54.999
you got some friends and support that had been
missing for years, have you ever worried about

00:44:55.000 --> 00:44:59.999
the effect of becoming more
popular sometimes on a movement?

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.999
Well, I worry about it particularly when I become
less popular which is what’s happening in the moment

00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.999
and (inaudible) enough less popular that
disasters are happening in Congress,

00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.999
and we haven’t organized the defense
well enough yet, there’s too much hubris

00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:19.999
not enough humility not enough sharing
of credit. I was talking to an audience

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.999
in Phoenix not too long ago, and the figure at
half-mast because of Richard Nixon’s death.

00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:29.999
It occurred to me not having
read Shakespeare carefully

00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:34.999
that something was said by somebody about
the good and evil but must be buried over

00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:39.999
the bones and rubbers remember. That’s
Julius Caesar. And it seem to me that

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:44.999
people were just remembering the
evil of Richard Nixon. I said,

00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:49.999
\"I think, we should remember some other things. We have
the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Air Act,

00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:54.999
Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species
Act, The World Heritage system

00:45:55.000 --> 00:45:59.999
around the world is a Richard
Nixon.\" When he was president,

00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:04.999
first, he gave his speech on population controller that
was never equaled by any other President before I sense.

00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:09.999
And we had a conference shortly
after that in Aspen Colorado

00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:14.999
when John Ehrlichman told me that
speech had bombed at the box office.

00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:19.999
No support from the public so just really,
hell of it, I tried testing my own audiences.

00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:24.999
People who would come to hear an environmentalist
stock, do you think there’s a population problem,

00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:29.999
hands up all over the place, how many
people thank Richard Nixon for his speech?

00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.999
One out of a thousand, one out of a
thousand isn’t very much support.

00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.999
And I just went on to wonder, \"Well, what
might have happened to Richard Nixon?\"

00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.999
Is this bold move on population
had brought this avoided

00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.999
(inaudible) It didn’t as it
wasn’t, there was no support.

00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:54.999
And that’s one of the points that gets through by the time
I’m talking to audience, people think I’m (inaudible)

00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:59.999
that one because it is something we
can do, it doesn’t cost that much,

00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.999
and we don’t do it. You now
have in this country today

00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:09.999
a number of… It must be said Hollywood stars who were outspoken
in their support for the environment raised a lot of money.

00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.999
And in a sense it have become more identifiable
than any actual environmental leader.

00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:19.999
Now is there something wrong with that?
No, I think that’s fine.

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.999
And that my favorite story in that respect
as when I came back from a peace conference

00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:29.999
in Prague in 1983, I need to stop at
the University of Syracuse to talk.

00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:34.999
And I talked and had an audience
of 300 to 400 which is nice.

00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:39.999
That night and Syracuse, the
Grateful Dead filled the stadium,

00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.999
and it occurred to me that maybe we should put some words to music,
and I’m glad that the Grateful Dead there had been some people

00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:49.999
there who care about environment and
have been helping us. As Connie Chung,

00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:54.999
once said, just between you and me
now, do you really the Dig music?

00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:59.999
No. No. But then does
one of my limitations,

00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.999
and I like the reaction of the
audience to The Grateful Dead,

00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:09.999
and I remember, one of their
records, and I’m trying to find it,

00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:14.999
I played again and again and again when I was
designing and laying out the Sierra Club book

00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:19.999
on Central Park country. And I want to hear it
again, it’ll just awaken all kinds of design ideas

00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.999
that I had. But it was there.
That was good music.

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:29.999
Then the volume is what bothers me,

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:34.999
I just can’t handle the volume other
people seem to able to deal not Brower.

00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:39.999
You don’t climb mountains anymore.
I don’t climb mountains

00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.999
because I’m carrying a little more weight than I should.
Well, I still like to look at them, and I remember one of my

00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:49.999
determinations of that was in my 60s.
Nineteen,

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:54.999
whatever when I was 64 and I designed if I
don’t go look at the big ones in the Himalaya,

00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
pretty soon I won’t be able to train myself
to do it. And then one of the ways I trained

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
to decide in January that I wanted to go
somewhere in October and be in shape.

00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
So it meant watching what I ate, what
I drank, walking down a mass transit,

00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
walking back up my hill (inaudible)
vertical feet every day,

00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
and I’m getting ready for that, I lost
something like 25 pound transferred back

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
into something more useful,
and I saved a lot of money,

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
bridge tolls, gasoline, tires all of that, but the truth,
it don’t cost that much, and then I took the trip,

00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
I went on a almost a one month track
and lost another 23 pounds there,

00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
and then… So I was back to the weight
in which I was married and then

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
(inaudible) which point I was accepted with my wife and she thought
I was becoming acceptable again so I’m due for another track

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.999
but in any event that’s one of the things that it is
awfully rewarding to get your body in shape and say,

00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:54.999
\"Hey, that’s a hill it’s not gonna bother me, I can go up it
and not even gonna to have to breathe harder maybe boring,

00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:59.999
but I can do it.\" And the
mountains give you that,

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
they give you that kind of up and then I
did get up to 18,000 feet, which is nice,

00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
right under average but there’s only 11,000 feet
higher still so in the long way from the top,

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
but I got to look at it, and
it was a great experience.

00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:19.999
For the rest of my days, I’m gonna be working very
hard on looking for security and restoring the earth

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:24.999
and passing on to the next generation something that’s resembles
a little bit like what we inherited. At the age of 83,

00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.999
David Brower steel shows little sign of retiring.
For several years now he’s been promoting an idea

00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:34.999
is called global CPR, he wants
the idea made real by actions to

00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.999
become his legacy. I asked him about
it at the close of our conversation.

00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.999
You wanted… Well, let me put it this
way, you wanna perform CPR in the world.

00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.999
The CPR is for the… Initials for
Conservation, Preservation,

00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:54.999
and Restoration. And conservation process has been
with us ever since the beginning of the century

00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:59.999
Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford
Pinchot and all of that,

00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.999
and preservation that we just
preserve but we can’t replace.

00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.999
And then on restoration there’s been a lot of restoration going
on for a long time but restoration in order talking about now

00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:14.999
restoration of natural and human systems take some
arrogant to think we can restore natural systems

00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:19.999
because nature is rather better
trained at this than we are.

00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.999
One of the things we can do is try to get something
started to then jump back out of the way

00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:29.999
and let nature do it or jumpstart nature which
we’ve seen some pretty good examples of

00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:34.999
that’s for the natural systems.
And one of them is, for example,

00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:39.999
I guess, the most exciting
one is Auroville, India

00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.999
where the long bad agricultural
practices they reduce their soil do

00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:49.999
(inaudible) essentially to rock. And I’d
always understood from ecology friends of mine

00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:54.999
that whoever did that you’re out of
the game that was it but in Auroville

00:51:55.000 --> 00:51:59.999
and thanks so they drilled holes in
(inaudible) brought in soil in holes,

00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:04.999
one of the things in the soil and nurtured it
carefully and in the course of many years of rebuild,

00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.999
they begun to rebuild an ecosystem.
That’s pretty satisfactory.

00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:14.999
It’s a long way from what they had in the first
place, but they’re moving in that direction.

00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:19.999
And Dan Jansen, University of Pennsylvania
is doing something like that in Costa Rica

00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:24.999
restoring a dry tropical forest.
What we need to do in our CPR effort

00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:29.999
has tried to show what has been done, what
is succeeding, what is not succeeding

00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:34.999
this around the world. And I’m just hoping
that we can find out how to run an economy by

00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:39.999
putting the earth back together even as
we run one by taking the Earth apart.

00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.999
My one-liners simply if there is
money to be made in restoration.

00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:49.999
If you don’t believe it, take your car
to the shop or your body to the doctor,

00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:54.999
they are both in restoration
business, they’re both doing alright

00:52:55.000 --> 00:52:59.999
there’s money to be made in restoration. You’re
impressed by an idea, for example, in a prairie states,

00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:04.999
they’ve been talking about buffalo comments for
years. Where you take some of the land that is really

00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:09.999
not supporting much human population at this particular
point and certainly not much economic activity,

00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.999
giving it back into a natural state where buffalo would
realm and the ideas that you might even increase

00:53:15.000 --> 00:53:19.999
the human population if those areas become more visited. And
certainly one capitalist who thinks that’s a good idea,

00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.999
Ted Turner, he’s got a lot of Buffalo.
You have an idea

00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:29.999
that there are a lot of
people who can be set to work

00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:34.999
at preserving parts of our world right now?
Preserving, restoring,

00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:39.999
conserving of three CPR, a lot of
people could be put to work, I think,

00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:44.999
we could run the global economy on this. And that’s
what I’m trying to get people to think about,

00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:49.999
and we’re going to need corporations to take the lead
in this because they’ve got the managing capability,

00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:54.999
the organizing capability that’s all to have the
importance. And I just want to see somehow,

00:53:55.000 --> 00:53:59.999
see, how we can get them started.
Here’s my concluding argument

00:54:00.000 --> 00:54:04.999
there’d be no corporations on the dead
planet, no customers, no shareholders,

00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:09.999
no Wall Street, and they’re killing it.

00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:14.999
Is there enough of an army of volunteers out there?
What I’ve been doing for a good many years now,

00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:19.999
and I gave my pitch on global CPR.

00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:24.999
And I’ve done this in all the
continents except Antarctica,

00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:29.999
and I couldn’t get a request from penguins
(inaudible) speech but in any event

00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:34.999
where I have gone and I’ve asked the question, and
the audiences widely vary lot of student audiences,

00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:39.999
this includes, people in the media in Japan,
it includes doctors and health professionals

00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:44.999
it includes whole veterans in Russia,
and whatever, I’ve got quite a mix,

00:54:45.000 --> 00:54:49.999
but I’d asked, \"How many people in the
audience who would be willing to commit

00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:54.999
one year out of your next 10 to working

00:54:55.000 --> 00:54:59.999
on CPR as a volunteer,

00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:04.999
for pay, to help coach it, to help
fundraise it, to help organize it,

00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:09.999
one way or the other would you be willing to do this?\" And
almost universally about two-thirds of the hands go up.

00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:14.999
And that’s… So that’s audiences
now that are getting close to

00:55:15.000 --> 00:55:19.999
300,000. The point is
there are a lot of people

00:55:20.000 --> 00:55:24.999
who are willing to do it, there is a
shortage of people who are willing

00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:29.999
or able to organize those
people and to get it going.

00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:34.999
And you’ve already come around again
for another 80 years. I mean,

00:55:35.000 --> 00:55:39.999
I enjoyed at take some lesson in how to organize to
get people to take this new change do the u-turn

00:55:40.000 --> 00:55:44.999
so that we build a civilization based
on putting things together instead

00:55:45.000 --> 00:55:49.999
of taking them apart as
shift it’s a challenge,

00:55:50.000 --> 00:55:54.999
it’s got to start sometime, it will start because
the cost of not doing it is prohibitive.

00:55:55.000 --> 00:56:00.000
But I haven’t persuaded enough people who
believe that yet. I’m working on it.

00:56:35.000 --> 00:56:39.999
The preceding program is made
possible by financial support

00:56:40.000 --> 00:56:44.999
from the SGRS Foundation
Harper-Collins Publishers

00:56:45.000 --> 00:56:49.999
Bruce Horn and viewers like you.

00:56:50.000 --> 00:56:55.000
[music]