Sierra Club: The Sierra Club was founded in 1892 by preservationist John Muir with funding from the famous robber baron E.H. Harriman. Mostly an outing club until the 1950s, the Sierra Club became a radical environmental lobbying organization under the leadership of David Brower. In 1969, Brower left Sierra Club to create the more radical Friends of the Earth. Later on he also founded the Earth Island Institute.
Michael McCloskey replaced Brower and proceeded to refocus the Sierra Club into an organization dedicated to preventing all commercial uses of public lands in the United States. In 1971, leaders of the Sierra Club in Canada created Greenpeace. In 1979, the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society gave David Foreman a 10-year contract to create and lead an overtly terrorist environmental organization. That organization became Earth First!
Greenpeace: Founded in 1971 out of the Don't Make a Wave Committee, to co-opt drug-rock-sex counterculture victims into WWF-sponsored "direct action." Now has branches in 24 countries, with headquarters in The Netherlands and an annual budget of $157 million. Spawned ecoterrorist groups Sea Shepherd, Lynx, Animal Liberation Front, and Earth First!
Current director is Lord Peter Melchett, heir to the Imperial Chemical Industries fortune. Behind-the-scenes operator from early years is David McTaggart, Canadian confidence man, who received funding from WWF Executive Director Sir Peter Scott to purchase ships to assault nuclear test ranges, whaling fleets, and seal hunters.
Friends of the Earth : Founded in 1969 by David Ross Brower, former executive director of Sierra Club. In 1990, merged with Environmental Policy Institute and Oceanic Society and obtained tax-exempt status from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Moved into England in 1970, with financing from the Goldsmith and Rothschild interests and John Aspinall.
Engages in direct action and other activities particularly targeting nuclear power plants. Director of FOE U.K. during the 1980s was Jonathan Porritt, son of ex-governor general of New Zealand. Founder of FOE France, Brice LaLonde was later appointed President Francois Mitterrand' s environmental minister. FOE, like Greenpeace, deployed personnel to found Earth First!
This is a story about the rise of the machines, and our belief in the balance of nature.
How the idea of "The Ecosystem" was invented
How it inspired us
And how it wasn't even true.
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