Therefore Let Us Behave Accordingly

SHOULD WE ALSO FLOOD THE SISTINE CHAPEL
SO TOURISTS CAN GET NEARER TO THE CEILING?
--SIERRA CLUB AD AGAINST ANOTHER DAM IN GRAND CANYON (1966)

MONUMENTAL : David Brower Fights for Wild America (2004)

If I could go back to a point in history to try to get things to come out differently,
I would go back and tell Moses to go up the mountain again and get the other tablet. Because the Ten Commandments just tell us what we are supposed to do with one another, not a word about our relationship to the earth. Genesis starts with these commands: multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it. We have multiplied very well, we have replenished our populations very well,
we have subdued it all too well, and we don’t have any other instruction.
--David Brower

Sooner or later in every talk,
(David) Brower describes the creation of the world. He invites his listeners to consider the six days of Genesis as a figure of speech for what has in fact been four billion years. On this scale,
a day equals something like
six hundred and sixty-six million years, and thus all day Monday and until Tuesday noon, creation was busy getting the earth going. Life began Tuesday noon, and the beautiful organic wholeness of it developed over the next four days. At 4pm Saturday, the big reptiles came on. Five hours later, when the redwoods appeared, there were no more big reptiles. At three minutes before midnight, man appeared.
At one-fourth of a second before midnight, Christ arrived. At one-fortieth of a second before midnight, the Industrial Revolution began. We are surrounded with people who think that what we have been doing for that one-fortieth of a second can go on indefinitely.
They are considered normal, but they are stark, raving mad.
--John McPhee
Encounters With The Archdruid

Polite conversationalists
leave no mark
save the scars upon the Earth
that could have been prevented
had they stood their ground.
--David Brower

No more cars in national parks. Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs--anything--but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out. We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places. An increasingly pagan and hedonistic people (thank God!), we are learning finally that the forests and mountains and desert canyons are holier than our churches. Therefore let us behave accordingly.
--Edward Abbey
Desert Solitaire