Apparently, Brower never learned his manners. Rejected by the Sierra Club, he started Friends of the Earth (FOE), to pursue his radical environmentalism. Ten years later, the FOE didn’t want him as their friend anymore. They tossed him out. By 1982, Brower got around to starting the Earth Island Institute, where he remains idolized by this reportedly radical Berkeley-based group. In 1999 and as his last hurrah, Brower made a final stab at heading up the Sierra Club again. He gave it up after he realized hardly enough members wanted him to lead this group. And then he died.

But Brower’s legacy was not really one of having created a better or cleaner environment. Witness the global rising of carbon dioxide emissions as one testament to his militant philosophy. It was for naught. If Brower had truly cared about the environment, he would have used all of his fury to shut down the nation’s coal mines and to demand utilities rely mostly on nuclear energy. He did not take that path. Instead, Brower fought to save a few national parks and stir up a lot animosity.

A closer look at the roots of the environmentalist movement demonstrates its foundation is built around being ‘anti-people.’ The modern-day environmentalist is not truly eager to create a better environment. His secretive wish is to reduce the world’s population. All fine and well – sounds like a great idea to reduce the population, eh? But, who shall offer up his life in order to save the life of a seagull or spotted owl? Certainly not the environmentalist.

As magazine columnist Lowell Ponte wrote, “For many political Leftists, environmentalism is merely a pretext through which private property and capitalism can be regulated, strangled, and finally replaced with totalitarian government ownership of everything.”

Is this far-fetched or a simplistic analysis of the environmental movement? Let’s take one of David Brower’s key philosophies. Brower had some very strong opinions about the family unit. One famous quote his fellow environmentalists probably wish Brower had never made was, “Childbearing (should be) a punishable crime against society unless the parents hold a government license.” Brower didn’t leave it at that, but insisted on taking his philosophy to the next level, “All potential parents (should be) required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”