SAN FRANCISCO - David Brower, the mountain-climbing activist who helped shape the environmental movement for most of the 20th century, died of bladder cancer at his Berkeley home Sunday night. He was 88.
Brower, a Sierra Club member starting in 1933, served as the club's first executive director from 1952 through 1969, developing it into one of the nation's most powerful environmental groups.
Brower built the Sierra Club from a small hiking group of 2,000 people into a 77,000-member organization by the time he was forced out as executive director.
A relentless advocate, he upbraided fellow environmental activists he felt were willing to make compromises.
''The world is burning and all I hear from them is the music of violins,'' Brower said in May upon resigning from the Sierra Club board for the third time in 15 years. ''The planet is being trashed, but the board has no real sense of urgency. We need to try to save the Earth at least as fast as it's being destroyed.''
Generations of activists learned about the environmental movement by reading John McPhee's 1971 book about Brower, ''Encounters with the Archdruid.''
''He listened to his own drum,'' McPhee said. ''He had some arrogance. He was feisty. He was a battler. He was ministerial in the sense that he had a cause and he was in a pulpit.''
Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, worked with Brower for 30 years and called him ''innovative'' in the environmental movement.
''He always thought that people could be made and inspired and provoked to be bolder and better and more energetic than if they were just left alone,'' Pope said. ''He was a great pot stirrer and the Sierra Club was a big pot that needed to be stirred.''
The Sierra Club, which has considerable influence in Washington and state capitals throughout the country, now includes more than 600,000 members nationwide.
''The world has lost a pioneer of modern environmentalism,'' said Sierra Club president Robert Cox. ''Like the California redwoods he cherished, David towered above the environmental movement and inspired us to protect our planet.''
President Clinton called Brower ''one of the earliest and most ardent defenders of the extraordinary natural heritage that enriches and unites all Americans.''
''Over more than half a century, from Cape Cod to the Grand Canyon to the Alaska wilderness, he fought passionately to preserve our nation's greatest national treasures,'' Clinton said. ''His fiery activism helped build and energize the modern environmental movement, rallying countless people to the defense of our precious planet.''
An avid mountain climber and skier who dropped out of college as a sophomore after studying butterflies, Brower served in the 10th Mountain Division during World War II and had an outdoor adventure career that took him around the globe.
''No words here can adequately express our loss, nor the overwhelming influence he and his conservation activism have had on the environment,'' Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said. ''He was a tremendous force for nature and his accomplishments made him a well-respected visionary.''
Brower led a campaign in the 1960s to block construction of two hydroelectric dams in the Grand Canyon and persuaded skeptical board members to go ahead with the expensive, but successful, ''coffee table'' books of Ansel Adams' photographs of park and wilderness areas.
Brower also led Sierra Club efforts to pass the Wilderness Act and create Kings Canyon, North Cascades and Redwoods National Parks and Point Reyes and Cape Cod National Seashores.
Brower gave up on attempts to halt the construction of a dam in Glen Canyon, Ariz., in order to stop dam construction in Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado. That trade-off haunted him, said his son, Ken Brower.
''Glen Canyon was what he considered his biggest mistake and the worst loss that happened on his watch,'' Ken Brower said. ''It ate at him considerably and it became an object lesson that he taught, which was 'Don't compromise.'''
David Brower and the Earth Island Institute, an umbrella group he founded for numerous environmental projects based in San Francisco, have been working on restoring Glen Canyon and draining Lake Powell, formed by the Glen Canyon dam.
Brower's charisma brought a lot of young people into the movement, said John Knox, executive director of Earth Island Institute.
''He had a tremendous capacity for loving nature and loving the earth and becoming tremendously irritated when people did something to destroy that,'' he said.
Brower was forced out of his job as executive director of the Sierra Club in 1969 by board members who were unhappy that he made major decisions without consulting them.
He went on to found Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters, which have become respected environmental groups. He resigned from the board of Friends of the Earth after a battle for control in 1986.
''The environmental movement has lost a champion, and I have lost a dear and valued friend,'' Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader said Monday.
''David Brower was the greatest environmentalist and conservationist of the 20th century. He was an indefatigable champion of every worthwhile effort to protect the environment over the last seven decades.''
Brower is survived by his wife, Anne, four children and three grandchildren. Services were being planned. Donations can be made to the Brower Fund of Earth Island Institute, 300 Broadway, Ste. 28, San Francisco, Calif. 94133.