Quotes By David R. Brower

All I know about thermal pollution is that if we continue our present rate of growth in electrical energy consumption it will simply take, by the year 2000, all our freshwater streams to cool the generators and reactors.

'Realistic' is a loaded word for me. Anyone who uses the word 'realistic' is all bad.

We've pumped waste into cavities in solid rock and found that it spread through the rock.

Perhaps most ridiculous of all is the suggestion that we 'keep' our radioactive garbage for the use of our descendants. This 'solution', I think, requires an immediate poll of the next 20,000 generations.

They simply don't know that much about what they're doing. There isn't enough control. There isn't enough capability in ordinary people to tinker with such a complicated piece of machinery.

It is absolutely imperative that we protect, preserve and pass on this genetic heritage for man and every other living thing in as good a condition as we received it.

We are at the edge of an abyss and we're close to being irrevocably lost.

Is the minor convenience of allowing the present generation the luxury of doubling its energy consumption every 10 years worth the major hazard of exposing the next 20,000 generations to this lethal waste?

What's even more unsettling is the way these people hide what they're doing from the public. They strip the labels off miracle wheat when they ship it, for instance, and say, 'Watch out. Don't plant too much and don't depend on it too much.'