Sierra Club: The Carl Pope era, ends ... by gimleteye

Last week Carl Pope, long-time executive director and recently chairman of the board of Sierra Club, announced his plan to resign-- ending a tenure of nearly two decades. Sierra Club is the nation's oldest conservation organization, with chapters and groups spread across the states. Among its peers, the Club is known for being "grass-roots", with an extensive organizational and administrative structure built around promoting the values of members at the local level. What also distinguishes the Club is its willingness to educate, lobby, and to litigate.

This combination of activities is unusual. For example, when in 2001 vice president Dick Cheney convened a White House energy task force in secret, blocking disclosure of its activities, Sierra Club immediately sued. Locally, Sierra Club has been involved in both state and federal lawsuits, like the successful effort against the US Army Corps of Engineers for caving into the demands of rock miners in west Dade to destroy Everglades wetlands. In its broad and muscular appeal, Sierra Club has long been one of the most trusted and identifiable brands in America's environmental movement. For many years, Carl Pope has been the group's leader and visible face.

For many reasons, the Club's main focus is in the western states. Its headquarters are in San Francisco. There, the Club is mainly viewed as a dowager of the environmental movement; conservative and hide-bound. In Florida, the Club's image is opposite. Many of Florida's developers and polluters identify Sierra Club as left-leaning extremists. (I know. For many years-- until 2003-- I was a leader of Sierra Club at the local and state level.)

The biggest threat to the Club during the Carl Pope era was the issue of immigration policy. Pope and the majority of the Sierra Club board were under continual pressure to support strong measures to limit population and to limit the fiscal impact of immigrants. Although the majority did fend off repetitive assaults against the Sierra Club policies of inclusiveness, the controversy also hardened the organization and opened its paid executive leadership to criticism that it paid lip-service to its own democratic processes.

The inertia gripping the nation's environmental movement is attributed to the economic crisis. Everywhere, paid membership is down. But the crisis for the nation's environmental organizations didn't begin in 2008, not by a long shot. In Miami for instance, the pressure of suburban sprawl and a declining quality of life-- requiring two wage earner-families to struggle to maintain the same standard of living that one wage earner had provided in earlier decades-- stripped a large pool of potential volunteers. The generations that lived and fished, hunted and bird-watched are fading. As Miami became more urban-- and government and the mainstream media aligned with development forces insistent on consuming the Everglades for their own private profit-- Sierra Club and its intrepid campaigners find themselves more and more isolated.

Still, the endorsement of Sierra Club is highly sought by political candidates and elected officials. The group, along with other south Florida conservation organizations, remains committed to the spirit of educating children-- especially inner city residents, and is active in Everglades related issues including protecting the Urban Development Boundary.

Carl Pope held up his end of the bargain, balancing environmental issues for the nation that needed a hard-edged spokesman and fiscal realities that often led to compromises. For example, Sierra Club has walked a tightrope between educational activities that qualify for tax deductible contributions and political ones, that don't. In contrast, many organizations who are popularly identified as conservationist completely avoid political involvement. It has been a difficult balancing act for Club leadership; compounded by the Citizens United decision of the US Supreme Court that puts substantially more weight behind corporate influence.

Pope is a brilliant writer and thinker on the environment. He plans in the future, according to published reports, to work more closely with industry in reforming economic activities toward the goals of sustainability. As for Sierra Club, it will continue to reflect the determination and interests of its members, thwarted by turns by institutional weight and a fearful public that would rather turn on the TV than think and act on issues that seem beyond any individual's control.