David Brower - Career With Sierra Club

Career With Sierra Club

After the war, Brower returned to his job at the University of California Press, and began editing the Sierra Club Bulletin in 1946. He managed the Sierra Club annual High Trips from 1947 to 1954. Brower was named the first executive director of the Sierra Club in 1952, and joined the fight against the Echo Park Dam in Utah's Dinosaur National Monument. Taking advantage of his background in publishing, Brower rushed This is Dinosaur - edited by Wallace Stegner with photographs by Martin Litton and Philip Hyde - into press with publisher Alfred Knopf. Conservationists successfully lobbied Congress to delete Echo Park Dam from the Colorado River Project in 1955, and the Sierra Club received much of the credit. Brower began Sierra Club Books' Exhibit Format book series with This is the American Earth in 1960, followed by the highly successful In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World, with color photographs by Eliot Porter in 1962. These coffee-table books sold well and introduced the Sierra Club to new members interested in wilderness preservation. Brower published two new titles a year in the series, but they began to lose money for the organization after 1964, though many claim they were the primary cause of the Club's extraordinary growth and rise to national prominence. Financial management began to be a bone of contention between Brower and the Club's board of directors.

Building on the biennial Wilderness Conferences which the Club launched in 1949 together with The Wilderness Society, Brower helped the Club win passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. Brower and the Sierra Club also led a major battle to stop the Bureau of Reclamation from building two dams that would flood portions of the Grand Canyon. In 1964, Brower organized a dory river expedition led by Martin Litton with Philip Hyde and author Francois Leydet. The trip led to the book Time and The River Flowing which galvanized public opposition to the dams. In June 1966 the Club placed full-page ads in the New York Times and the Washington Post asking, "Should we also flood the Sistine Chapel so tourists can get nearer the ceiling?" The campaign brought in many new members. The Internal Revenue Service announced it was suspending the Club's 501(c)(3) charitable organization status. The board had set up the Sierra Club Foundation as an alternative for tax-deductible contributions, but revenues to the Club dropped, despite victories in blocking the Grand Canyon dams and a considerable increase in membership.

As annual deficits increased, tension grew between Brower and the Sierra Club board of directors. Another conflict grew over the Club's position on the Diablo Canyon Power Plant planned for construction by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) near San Luis Obispo, California. The Club had played a major role in blocking PG&E's plan for a nuclear power plant at Bodega Bay in the early 1960s, but that campaign had centered on the earthquake danger from the nearby San Andreas Fault, not out of opposition to nuclear power itself. The Club's board of directors had voted to support the Diablo Canyon site for the power plant in exchange for PG&E's moving its initial site from the environmentally sensitive Nipomo Dunes. In 1967 a membership referendum upheld the board's policy. Brower had come to believe that nuclear power was a dangerous mistake at any location, and he publicly voiced his opposition to Diablo Canyon, in defiance of the Club's official policy.

Sierra Club board elections in the late 1960s produced sharply defined pro- and anti-Brower factions. In 1968 Brower's supporters won a majority, but in 1969 anti-Brower candidates won all five open positions. Brower was charged with financial recklessness and insubordination by two of his former close friends, photographer Ansel Adams and board president Richard Leonard. Brower's resignation was accepted by a board vote of ten to five.

Eventually reconciled with the Sierra Club, Brower was elected to the board of directors for a term from 1983 to 1988, and again from 1995 to 2000. Brower was deeply concerned about issues of overpopulation and immigration - which was a major factor leading to his resignation in protest from the board of directors in 2000. "Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us," he said, "and immigration is part of that problem. It has to be addressed." Some of his views with regard to population control were quite controversial. For example, he once stated that, "Childbearing a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license ... All potential parents required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing."