Time & Perspective Quote by David R. Brower

Brower’s line lands like an offhand confession from a species that can’t handle its own tools. The phrasing “It seems” is doing sly work: it’s casual, almost conversational, but it also suggests a grim pattern so obvious he doesn’t need to litigate it. He’s not arguing; he’s observing a repeat offense. And the bite is in the childish verb “wreck” - not “damage,” not “degrade,” but the kind of careless destruction you do when you’re bored, overpowered, and unaccountable.

As an environmentalist who helped define modern conservation politics, Brower is speaking from the mid-century arc of abundance: postwar electrification, highways, dams, suburban sprawl, and the broader faith that more energy automatically equals progress. His point isn’t that energy is evil. It’s that energy without restraint becomes permission. When a society suddenly gets “a lot of energy,” it also gets speed, reach, and leverage - the ability to move mountains, drain wetlands, reroute rivers, stripmine landscapes. The wrecking isn’t an accident; it’s the predictable side effect of power married to short-term thinking.

The subtext is an indictment of the progress narrative that treats nature as inert material and treats consequences as someone else’s problem, later. Brower compresses a whole environmental worldview into one cynical rhythm: new capacity arrives, appetite expands to match it, and the bill comes due in ecosystems. It works because it doesn’t moralize; it implicates “mankind” broadly, daring the listener to pretend they’re exempt.