David Brower: Speaks about "What Will it Cost the Earth" at Kelly Hall, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio (Part B)

But planners have done a lot of that because I think there's been a lot of think that's always a little harsh and that is. I would like to say here how do we have this proliferation reactor. How do we get them the proliferation of arm testing nuclear blast that should go. For gas producing bad gas last autumn you Colorados as it looks in other words how do we get the AC under control and how do we use to everything. The criteria for a peaceful stable economy in the world it's a good question. We hope you'll get into it a little bit of it has been June of the small conference leading to a larger one or two on the subject for the conference. He can survive economically feasible. It's a good question. How do we discover out of this. The alternatives to war I think there are some good alternatives to war. You probably know there is a quote as well as I do with the hand that held the. Axe against the ice the tiger and the bear. Funnels the machine guns lovingly. It's a habit

that will have to break this or that the roots go very deep. We've got to break through and I think getting the balance with the Earth's biological system will have a chance to get a better balance with each other. I think that the reason the environmental problems the biggest problems are REALLY WANT TO aspect of all these different aspects of the same thing. And how do we within our own country reenact the Bill of Rights is actually what some Republicans are trying to do. Justice Douglas now you certainly I certainly see a great need for an instant book. Pointing out what extraordinary things this man has contributed to this country. I don't think Mr. Forbes I'm tired of the shiny shoes. Ah. Well in summary list the list I think we have 10 years to mount

on behalf of the. General Robel global strike against progress. That is. The kind of look we've got to get going not so much need to treat it got to be major change but it's got to be done. I know that we're surrounded by a good many people who would rather die than change their habits. And so I wonder about what the approaches might be to persuade them to change their habits rather than for all of us to go. I think that there are the things that I've been talking about these various things the pipelines the blast of the SS PS and the jet ports in Florida. These things will be stopped. What will I be stuck in time. And ration out of this is the question. They will be given each one of them. We ask what will it cost the earth. There will be if we apply some sort of a little formula that I like to call the 1910 formula if you will assume just pulling a Figure out of the thing or the man is now a hoot about 90

percent of the land surface of the earth either rationally or your Russian jet you're pretty good 90 percent and used. What do we do with the other 10 percent. We grow through it. We live while we do we go through that at the rate we do want secularism also used for very many more years. Or Here you go another 10 percent right of the brain. If we go on any further with that kind of thing we're over the brink so that point will have to turn back and do better where we work. Doesn't make just perfect sense even to a lot of people Corp executive stuff. Really good we are and go back and spend the resources we have. The genius of the technology of science of humanity to go back over the 90 percent and do better make a start and not have Los Angeles start in my backyard it was a very miserable Garden other than the conservation. You can go back over and do better there are all kinds of challenges there. The restoration of what man

is disrupted will be a great challenge to every. I think that it doesn't bother me too much of a few people like someone you know I'd like not too many to make too much of I like to see it kind of spread around the planet around to various cultures. But in any event that's the job. This other 10 percent so far as I'm concerned needs to be saved just for what it is we need to pretend is not there for any other purpose. Let that be the place where the information may be read that has been drilled into those that life starting into to human has gone out through these wrenching branching branches of life to person. Their whole load of wildness that is essentially uninterrupted by means technology and out of the words of Nancy Newhall. Contains answers to questions man has not yet learned how to ask. May we not assume. Logically assume unarmed that there will be brighter people when we come enough. I think we can but we are not the end result of evolution. In fact if you were

to leave organized what he says about us are going to get out a larger brain case then we may be a little bit stupid. In some past people. It's hard to describe just gone it didn't adjust he didn't adjust to whatever the creature was given the just the right. Thing. We're going to have some writer we're going to have better scope. As Gary Snyder points out and look for changes here. We are here you will hear the first generation of Earth to have this resource of energy up of information to build up the system does hasn't directly featured and I'd like to see the system work on that run and I know that he's got to have major change but in the use of the system as we now have. And bearing in mind that people in political life like you get elected might get re-elected and watch polls and watch me only watch editorials. This question on July 18th President Nixon wrote made the best speech any president has ever made in the popular simplicity.

It's true that in the first half the he gave in the second half he took away the first half said we're on a collision course is a very important problem the most important problem. And second never said that I don't want you to do anything but it will upset you or your religion. But how to rebuild the body how many people wrote to President Nixon all the chemicals that get to rebut that. What homebody. Don't be ashamed to put your hand up now how many did write to President Nixon saying you liked it you did like you like the first of the second it happened than anybody right now. Well this is a normal audience and if you share yours with any help the next question is Is there anyone here on your audience who thinks we do have a population problem. Very good. Now is there anyone here knowing that we have a population problem who has sat down or don't want to launder the money about it would say about three consecutive steps together in his own head

and on paper it will govern just in the expression of the steps aims. There is one page to page 3 of how population control might well be brought about. That is the something like the first kept It's fairly easy a second one it's harder if the first one feels and the third one is really look at what I've done either one or two paragraphs to yourself on what you think a solution might be. How many really good you know. Well those are the goal of Iran's can skip the next question. How many of those who would that. Have sent this on. To anyone. In the legislative business. Thank you. I haven't done it yet either but not the next one. The next question. Just a sort of a routine check. We had a major threat to him that you will most likely on the to resupply it to. It was a bad deal that could easily get your industry we support the housing industry is work.

The president was working Secretary of War and all that. And there was a great human cry in the conservation organization to oppose that anybody write a letter to the world or do not know. All right well er I think you have all I was leading into that. Perhaps a feeling of futility most of the rest of you haven't done anything more good it can be rated can he really do anything this story. Well this is probably what led to what they are. Apathy laziness lack of time we were all busy. I haven't written as I say to myself I've intended to but the point is we didn't do it. The system is there and I would like to point out with just a quick example or to look at it you can make a difference. I can say to you just once and you can be the real commuters your block. President. During the summer but in the Grand Canyon fight that I was close to

where we didn't really have the constituency in 1966 that there is now or an environmental problem. We have the proposal to the dams in the Grand Canyon. We got the kind of argument going on the Bureau of Reclamation saying that this is fine this will make peak the Grand Canyon available to the many and not just the hardy rugged few. Look there you can see the canyon better from these lakes in. All of that. That's right they did and they did it seriously. So we had in our series advertisement in the spirit of the driver was that if we had one I like particularly That said I also love the Sistine Chapel so tourist can pull the ceiling of the of the will. When I was a good one not those that. Were written. That I had one last year of his tax papers the one on the earth National Park loved my job. All these things are altered by gerrymandering that's really the.

Way. You want. If your neighbor manhood nine years ago. If you had a daughter the sellers of them. Were. Jerry. And. Jury matters a great guy and sometimes if you behave yourself I'll sense of that if you're going to the local paper. He's done on advertising he's in the business. But he started out I think I'm in a dying business and it is really a very creative guy and one of the really creative advertising might reach. Need to reform the thing I was going to do it yet. He's a good guy but he will be adding those good lines are His and all credit to him he will be glad to put on the SS teat last year trying to blast out of the world gets along well. On the Grand Canyon and that we had the entire California mall all the delegations of the seven the Colorado River States and that's a lot of congressmen and senators except for three members of Congress in California

one of them Berkeley because I think they're more spirited members of the district and anybody and you have to be. But for the most part that solid delegation and all its trading is for the day. The Bureau of Reclamation of course will be all the regulation associations the water developers that guard the Army Corps of Engineer types the heavy construction people are all or and so it turned out you know I think it was relentless almost door to door work and so when President Johnson and they didn't build that. It is just simply what happens when a few people said all they're not going to build I'm not running thing that's happened yet the little things are going to stop. Thank you Debbie. Right here that that was all it was me needed and I think the people who worked hardest on that. And I think it's appropriate here to mention what there were three fellows who came down with I'd like to get it from MIT. With the black leather jackets around their slide rules and shop that you were that one was a nuclear engineer. Imagine that one

was a mathematician what was McComb. And together they really one of the figures of the alternatives and really the cost benefit ratio is not just build it full of gold it wouldn't hold water the Bureau of the budget was embarrassed the Bureau of Reclamation tried to. He wants a programmer it is way off but he couldn't get out. These guys really had the night. Three guys just just passed. Third I was making some species myself and I was restricting myself to the emotional approach and that that was good for me. But we had. We had that kind of just sort of a little nucleus that began to grow when people only one of those was paid you the mathematician was on our staff in the southwest. But they the others are volunteering their time and we could afford the repair of the ticket to get them back to Washington. Another week we have not a very big coalition of individuals but they bombed the right course to take and they let the public know that it would

be in the public response when the dams were built there was an enormous response occurring lately sundering California once said after a earlier Gottman one by our school you don't know what a lot of the old him and the man who has a dam these districts are that you are my dams like it will be yours to say I'm sorry I'd like to give you the trade but if I got a bunch of letters from home to buy you are going to be in trouble and it's just that simple. That's a simple one. The more important part of getting yourself into the system over something that I think practically nobody wants this whole thing up in a hurry. But. That is not just writing letters to your congressman or to the butler to a secretary or to it and it really is traitor. But for him and there's a great big difference and this is what I was talking about a model where if if you do think of something that might be a solution for a population problem or something else. And how do we get the cars out of or cut off the highway will

always help the Corps of Engineers out without any more than the money. If you come through the whole series of steps or a modest series of steps a logical approach or a course of action some good paragraphs ago that the map can take and either put in late or at the fix them up so they sound like you know what the men record joining in the legislation you can draft legislation better if you can take this much time to participate in the government to come up with a solution on one of these problems assuming you pick one because you can get overwhelmed if you try everything. If you go in for just one of these problems. Become the expert in your life really put some time in one of them was in Congress not just a problem in the letter you write but a contentious solution that is good enough that you would vote for it yourself or your shoes that you would spend some money on it if you had it. You made a great big step and that we know what he

did but when people do it there are enormous returns we have an actual goal is preservation system primarily because one man did exactly that kind of word or the mobile sack that was ours on eyes or the late executive director of the Wilderness Society. And from the period in 1949 until his death just before the bill passed he wrote. Most of the speakers most of the legislation most of the variations in the bill or the proposed amendments. Most of the arguments and the proposed colloquy on the floor of the House and the Senate he wrote most of that when Senator Lugar Humphrey introduced the first governors Bill on either a drafted or even speak with which company would introduce it was not respect you can absolutely. You made it sound like. This is why I devoted to God and he did it and he kept patiently doing year after year it didn't all happen at once and he saw some of it get pared away and

it still needs to be fixed. When he got that great big giant step taken it was a good one I would want in the thing essence of mind. My intrigue here tonight is it not what. You should think. His efforts are futile if they're just focused and really appalled if Egypt uses that lady to use its building. It was part of your book really came all the way from that little piece of life that Tuesday you give each of us uses that on one of these environmental problems in addition to other duties. You can make a difference one person on one problem using his own individual capability can make a great deal. I know because I've seen it happen again and again. Even before there was a constituency which is what makes me feel a little happy when people say now that. The environmental thing is just a cop out. Now that we've got. But if you had gone on to quite a few hands on yours I want to go overboard and I don't want to do that. When we wind up with.

One or two little folks here. That last part of what I want to say that you did well because I want to go. But I do like that very Snyder thing to remember that when I don't have the quote exactly you may have it in your environment and this is the first generation that has all this behind it and the opportunity to apply it that way without being having a story with the weight of tradition that's an extraordinary opportunity and I think Jeffers gives his little one gives them the motivation. It's only a little planet but how beautiful and we can keep that is from being changed it was I think getting more and I don't mind. My favorite quote of all and I think probably one of the fairly well but you can't put it with all the call comes in it just like I think I can it was another Stevenson's last speech before there had been a moon Trapani invention but the moon the earth would look like I'm out there I guess. And he did it. I'm looking now incidentally for the tape of this speech

his son drowned Palestinians and lives in San Francisco thinks he can find it. And I like and what I like is to turn on stings and voice a good eye and I just know it's beautiful and it's the Pledge of Allegiance I'd say to the research we travel together. Passengers on a little spaceship depended upon its global reserves of air and soil committed for our own safety to its security and preserve the mild lesion. Only by their work here and I can see the love we give our fragile and that I will or letter word that we almost apologize for using I think is really the key. That is love is I suppose the one resource that is in abundance applause. It hasn't been used enough lately in them or through them or the rear. I think that that's one of the things I can make more difference than any of us doing right now. One word love. Love them or the planet or each other or our own

wonderful diversity whichever boundary or city street we live on up the good news we have begun to use it and see what happened. Do you think you are to have. Her.