Sierra Club leader departs amid discontent over group's direction

[ellisonz]

Carl Pope, the leader of the Sierra Club, one of the nation's most influential environmental groups, is stepping down amid discontent that the group has strayed from its environmental roots. (David Butow / For The Times)

Sierra Club Chairman Carl Pope, whose leadership has stirred dissent, steps down. Some believe the organization has compromised its core principles.

By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times

November 19, 2011

The leader of the Sierra Club, one of the nation's most influential environmental groups, has stepped down after 18 years amid discontent that the group founded by 19th Century wilderness evangelist John Muir has strayed from its core principles.

The departure of Carl Pope, 66, chairman of the club and a member for more than 40 years, comes as the nonprofit group faces declining membership, internal dissent, well-organized opponents, a weak economy and forces in Congress trying to take the teeth out of environmental regulations.

He has been replaced by Michael Brune, 40, a veteran of smaller activist groups, who has pledged to concentrate on grass-roots organizing, recruit new members and focus on issues such as coal-fired power plants. "We have different approaches," Brune said of his relationship with his predecessor.

Pope said he will leave his position as chairman to devote most of his time to "revitalizing the manufacturing sector" by working with organized labor and corporations. That emphasis caused schisms in the club, most notably when he hammered out a million-dollar deal with household chemical manufacturer Clorox to use the club's emblem on a line of "green" products, and more recently with its support of utility-scale solar arrays in the Mojave Desert, the type of place the club made its reputation protecting.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-sierra-club-20111119,0,2052409.story

[Blue_Tires]

1. I don't know what went on behind closed doors

But I've read some (unproven) accusations in recent years that the Sierra Club let a few pro-industry corporatists infiltrate upper management...

[ellisonz]

2. I'm just glad to see that they might be getting a bit more...

...direct action oriented. The Sierra Club should be an expansive and powerful organization; not a lobbying group. That's the spirit of John Muir.

John Muir talked even better than he wrote. His greatest influence was always upon those who were brought into personal contact with him. But he wrote well, and while his books have not the peculiar charm that a very, very few other writers on similar subjects have had, they will nevertheless last long. Our generation owes much to John Muir.

-Theodore Roosevelt in "John Muir: An Appreciation", Outlook (16 January 1915)

[emcguffie]

3. A good friend of mine used to work for an NGO at the UN --

-- as well as working an NGO she founded herself. BOth are involved in indigenous issues, and through that, climate issues.

She recently left, quite disillusioned, after many years of effective advocacy work. Most recently she had been working with groups on issues surrounding the construction of the Belo Monte dam complex in Brazil.

She had come to believe that all the big NGOs have become bought to at least some degree. They do all need money to keep going. They are sort of like our representatives in Congress -- they get bought by the highest bidder, and end up not doing what they started out to do. This seems to be happening particularly in the climate justice movement, with carbon credits and trading of credits and all that stuff. The story around the Belo Monte dam complex is extraordinary, far too complicated for most folks like me to get a grip on.

Money has done a great deal of damage everywhere. And the people with the money represent corporate interests, bottom line.

(edited for typo: climate/client)

[ellisonz]

5. I agree. It's becoming really problematic that NGOs are focused on fundraising...

...and not on building up electoral influence.

I see plenty of job professional openings for Directors, Marketing, and "Development" - but very little for actual organizers. I mean one good organizer can supervise dozens of key volunteers. If these "professionals" were any good at their job they'd be far more effective at doing more than running a fiefdom. I think it's sad that most young people probably associate the Sierra Club with job openings for "street-level fundraisers" and people chaining themselves to trees than any meaningful environmentalism. 18 years is far too long for any one man to hold such a position :-(

[Xithras]

4. Good. My wife and I have joint life memberships.

Pope was one of the worst things that ever happened to the Sierra Club. He managed to enact a huge change, altering it from an organization that directly opposed environmentally desructive actions on both a national and local level, to an organization that was largely focused on lobbying and high visibility court cases. The notion that the SC should be encouraging people to act locally has largely fallen by the wayside. My wife and I still participate in hikes and climbs through our local chapter, but I can't even remember the last time they tried to organize any serious opposition to anything. We're generally just asked to support their opposition of broader environmental concepts, like global warming.

Hopefully Brune will do a better job. Given his background, I expect that he will.

[Kolesar]

6. *You* organize the serious opposition, then

I did.

[Xithras]

9. Pope didn't seem to get that his own actions were the problem.

I've donated cash in the five figures to the Sierra Club over the past 20+ years, but haven't given them a dime lately. Why? Because I didn't like the direction the organization was going. Visit the local chapters, and you can easily get people ranting for hours about the same things. Pope claimed that he had to pursue the Clorox relationship for $$ because donations were falling, but it was his own poor leadership that caused donations to fall in the first place.

And this whole "Blue/Green Alliance" thing? Piss poor thinking. SC is an environmental group. It's job is to fight for the environment. It's job is NOT to be the arbiter of which environments are worth saving, and which aren't, based on "job creation". I, and most of the other Sierrans I personally know, oppose the entire notion that the environment must be sacrificed for economic growth. The fact that the LEADER OF THE SIERRA CLUB embraced that philosophy was disheartening, and caused me to close my wallet to them.

FWIW, your dismissiveness is a bit disturbing too. I've been a Sierra Club member since I was in high school. My dad has been a Sierra Club member since the 1950's, and my grandfather was not only a Sierra Club member, but used to guide High Trips into what are now the Ansel Adams and Emigrant wilderness areas in the high Sierra's during the 1950's and 1960's. I have also chained my arse across logging roads to stop redwoods from being cut, and have participated in several direct actions to interfere with environmentally damaging actions including vernal pool destruction in the San Joaquin Valley and development on marshland in the Sacramento Delta. Environmentalism is, and always has been, my number one political concern, more important than wars, the economy, or even feeding the hungry. I think that earns me the right to express my opinion about the leadership of an environmental organization that I'm a paid member of.

Pope believed that the fate of the environment was a negotiable matter. If you want my opinion on that, you need merely look at my sig line.

[cilla4progress]

16. Love it -

thanks for your inspiration.

I didn't know about these controversies, and am happy to be informed, and happy with the change, it sounds.


Signed, recent new member of the Sierra Club

[Luminous Animal]

10. Pope is why I gave up my membership and increased my donations to other environmental

groups.

Good luck to Brune. I hope he is able to get the organization back on track.

[Kolesar]

7. For another perspective, see

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x317527#317540

[ellisonz]

8. You don't think some turnover is not a good thing?

I mean the guy is 66, how much longer was he going to stay on? Is it really appropriate for the Sierra Club to be taking money to put their name on a chemical product? There's got to be a better way than that.

"I'm not going to bring any deals to the board that would negatively impact the Sierra Club brand," he added. "Nor will we associate with any company that has a green product line and also produces products that can damage the environment in ways they are not willing to address."

Pope had blunt words for critics of the Clorox decision: "I could predict with 90% certainty where somebody would stand on the Clorox controversy by knowing one bit of demographic data. The people in the Sierra Club who had significant concerns were between 50 and 68. They were people who cut their teeth on the counterculture greening-of-America-anti-business stuff of the 1970s."

[XemaSab]

12. I was surprised to see that figure

I would think that younger people would be just as likely to oppose such a deal, given that we've been raised to be suspicious of big chemical companies.

[Xithras]

13. I've always wanted to see some proof of that claim.

I've never believed it, not even for a moment. The opposition to the deal, in my experience, was nearly universal across the age groups. IMO, it was a bulls*** "statistic" that he made up on the spot because it fit his prejudices.

[ellisonz]

14. Yeah, I mean really...

$1.3 million over 4 years ain't jack. That's a back-up second baseman. It's not superstar.

He's an asshole and I'm glad he's gone. The sooner we have a real environmental movement in this country the better. Get out of classroom, get off the computer, get off the street, and touch some earth. It's amazing. :hi:

[ellisonz]

15. He has a point in the sense that later generations...

...have seen some environmental benefit from the work of the previous generations but we still know enough to see through such an argument. He went too far in his strategy and it was the straw that broke the camels back. The premise of his argument that generational divide would have something to do with peoples opinions of his actions was false. Young people still respect the opinion of their elders.

:crazy:

[hunter]

11. Bought by the 1% like everything else.

I left the Sierra Club a long time ago.

[KoKo]

17. Get power for Too Long...and you end up in Corporations Pockets...I gave to Nature Conservancy for

Years..and then I started to see some suspicious stuff. It was all confirmed with Nature Conservancy when Hank Paulson of "BAILOUT THE BANKS...AMERICA WILL GO DOWN IF YOU DON'T)went to Congress with his "Hair on Fire!"

I feel sad I gave money to Nature Conservancy...for years seeing that it was in Corporatists pockets.

Sierra Club did start to go to the "Dark Side."

Now that Obama is President they've all let us down. That's what I'm seeing, anyway.

My donor list for the end of the year is "Local" and not these groups. BUT, I will give to Local ACLU and Common Cause. If they "go down" by the end of next year...they lose my donations, also.