EARTH DAY CO-FOUNDER (DAVID BROWER) THOUGHT IMMIGRATION HAD TO BE Curbed AND POPULATION STABILIZED
AN EARTH DAY TRIBUTE TO DAVID BROWER, AN AUTHENTIC ENVIRONMENTALIST (1912-2000)
By Tim Murray,
B.C. Writer and Environmentalist
April 14, 2008
Who was David R. Brower? He was the dean of the American environmental movement, to be ranked with John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt in importance. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times, he founded 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.
But it was with Americas flagship environmental organization (The Sierra Club) that he was most associated with. He joined the Sierra Club in 1933, was elected to its board of directors in 1941 and was made its executive director in 1952. Under his leadership, club membership grew ten-fold (7,000 to 70,000) from a group of affluent apolitical hikers to an aggressive player on the national environmental scene. David Brower was the catalyst in this transformation. He was the Sierra Club.
Yet after 67 years, this great crusader felt compelled to resign, with no regret and a bit of desperation. Brower, you see, had a problem. He had a problem with corruption, bribery, political correctness and myopia. He knew that demography drives not only human destiny but the destinies of the species we impact, and that unchanged immigration policies would double Americas population by 2100, or if liberalized, add as many as another 700 million by that time. He also knew that post-1970 immigrants and their descendants would be the decisive force fuelling American population growth. If unchecked, it surely meant ecological Armageddon for the country. In resigning, Brower stated that Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of the problem. It has to be addressed.
Brower, of course, was not alone in advancing those beliefs. Earth Day co-founder and former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth First co-founder Dave Forman and Harvard professor and socio-biologist E. O. Wilson all warned of the environmental effects of current immigration policies. Just after the first Earth Day in 1970, The Presidents Commission on Population Growth and Americas Future urged Congress to stabilize the population at 200 million expeditiously. Paul Ehrlich was among several ecologists who identified 150 million people, half the countrys present population level, as a number that would ensure sustainable habitat survival.
The Sierra Club used to agree with them. It used to believe that population growth was a crucial variable in environmental degradation. After all, the EhrlichCommoner equation (Environmental Impact=Population x Affluence x Technology) was conventional wisdom and common sense. Population stabilization, a function of lower fertility rates and lower immigration quotas, was long a part of its program. According to its Population Report of 1989, Immigration to the U.S. should be no greater than that which will permit achievement of population stabilization in the U.S. And then suddenly, in 1996, that policy was dropped.
It became politically correct to ignore the P (Population) in the IPAT equation, and focus on A (Affluence, that is, reducing per capita consumption) and “T”, more efficient technologies. Supposedly, greener lifestyles and renewable technologies would save the day and with the oxymoronic fraud of smart growth, we could pretend that we could shoe-horn half the world into this continent merely by channeling, or managing growth. But when a group of Sierrans, including Brower, saw the folly of this approach and attempted to restore traditional immigration policy, in stepped a billionaire, David Gelbaum, who threatened that if it was restored the Sierra Club would never see a dollar of his money. The ruling clique complied and was dutifully rewarded with in excess of $100 million in bribes, tendered in 2000-1 alone.
Elizabeth May, for her part, threatened to change the name of the Sierra Club of Canada if the dissidents succeeded in returning the US Club to its original course. She has obviously carried her globalist convictions into the leadership of the Green Party of Canada with a pledge to chase immigration targets into the stratosphere, even beyond those of other parties. American Presidential Green candidate Ralph Nader, in contrast, denounced open borders and liberal immigration as absurd in his 2000 campaign, and for that reason enjoyed Browers support. Mass immigration can be understood as a right wing project that benefits from left wing collusion, with progressives essentially lining up behind Bill Gates and 40 major technology companies and agribusiness to drive down wages so that conservatives obtain their cheap labour and socialists obtain their cheap cause. Donations to conservation groups to look the other way while the invasion continues is an excellent return on corporate investment. No wonder Canadian members are kept ignorant about who gives money to environmental NGOs, how much is given and what directors are paid. No wonder sleazy arrangements are made between big corporations like the Royal Bank and Nature Conservancy of Canada; Toyota and the Audubon Society of America (a $20 million arrangement); and Clorox and the Sierra Club (a deal to endorse the cleaning products of the Clorox corporation).
Now you understand why this pioneer of the Sierra Club had to finally leave it just before his death in 2000. He could no longer stomach being a member of a corrupt, money-grubbing, corporate lackey that accepted a massive annual bribe to leave immigration, a vital ingredient of environmental degradation, out of the policy book.
He realized that a clique purchased by David Gelbaum’s millions and intent on chasing after potential Hispanic members (at the expense of defending the environment against the illegal invasion across the southern border) could not be overthrown. And the organization was too irredeemably corrupt to be reformed. It had to be abandoned and by-passed.
David Brower. An authentic environmentalist, a man of integrity and principle. A rare commodity in the movement.
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FURTHER REFERENCE:
http://www.susps.org/index.html (The whole story on the Sierra Club)
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/1631 (The Royal Bank and Nature Conservancy)
http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/index.php?module=pagemaster
&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=489
(May 17, 2006: The Litmus Test For All Environmental Organizations)
http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/index.php?module=pagemaster
&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=211
(July 12, 2005: Recently-Deceased U.S. Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson: A Model For All Those Seriously Interested In Environmental Causes)
