US Midterms: Sierra Club declares Victory

One day the Sierra club will have to come to with their denial of the real world.

Rationalization – a defense mechanism in which controversial behaviors or feelings are justified and explained in a seemingly rational or logical manner to avoid the true explanation.

THE UGLY TRUTHS ABOUT THE SIERRA CLUB
The Sierra Club may not have the aroma of a Klan rally, with burning crosses and white hoods. In fact, it’s something much more sinister and dangerous, a middle-class do-gooder movement with good public credentials paddling in the most polluted waters of American political life.
The immigrant-bashing within the Sierra Club is scarcely surprising. Board member David Foreman, shared with that son of the desert the late Edward Abbey a horror of immigration. In all such apocalyptic hysteria, there is not even the semblance of rational discussion of any relation between environmental degradation and demographic shifts. How come, for example, the US population has almost quadrupled since 1900, yet there is more land under forest cover today than at any time since the turn of the century? Is it immigrant Hispanics or corporate looters who now strip the Northwest forests? It’s not Mexicans cutting the Sierra Madre forest south of the border but Boise Cascade, an outfit from that bastion of white supremacy, Idaho.
One of the dirty semi-secrets of American environmentalism has been its century-long obsession with population control and racial eugenics. Today the obsession is as alive and malign as ever. The Sierra Club, which advertises itself as the nation’s most progressive and high-minded environmental group, has committed itself to public advocacy of severe restrictions on immigration, a 1997 initiative put up by Sierra Club board member Dave Foreman, Anne Ehrlich and former Sierra Club executive director John Tanton, who now heads the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
For years, there’s been a powerful faction amid the club’s half million-or-so members equating environmental decline with population pressure. The club has fanned such views with its own propaganda. It was the Sierra Club that published in 1968 the classic modern expression of Malthusian dementia, Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb where every wild fantasy about the evil consequences of over-breeding was given full rein.
Under the sponsorship of the Sierra Club, Ehrlich advocated measures of economic coercion against people having children. He urged cutbacks on government programs of “death control” (i.e., public health). He flirted with the idea of placing sterilizing agents in municipal water supplies and advocated punitive taxes on such items as cribs, diapers and diaper services. He also favored making foreign aid conditional on population control through that cherished creature of both the CIA and the environmental movement, the US Agency for International Development. He advised the sterilizing of all Third World fathers of three children.
In all this, Ehrlich was solidly within Sierra Club traditions as well as in agreement with Garrett Hardin, another hero of the enviro-Malthusian, whose mantra has been “The freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.” In 1949, Hardin noted in his hair-raising text book Biology: Its Human Implications that “Either there must be a relatively painless weeding out before birth, or a more painful and wasteful elimination of individuals after birth.”
Almost 30 years before Hardin wrote those words, the nation’s pre-eminent naturalist Henry Fairfield Osborne, a friend of Sierra Club founder John Muir, brought the second international Congress of Eugenics to New York, where promoters of the bogus science included the Rockefellers, the Fords and the Mellons. At this gathering, Osborne urged the erection of an immigration quota system and unveiled his belief that “the modern eugenics movement” would be the appropriate vehicle for advancing the conservation ethic.
Madison Grant, another intimate of Osborne and Muir, president of the Boone and Crockett Club and a leader of the Save the Redwoods League, spoke of “the immigrant tide of southern Europeans, Italians and Jews” as leading to a “racial abyss” that would ultimately destroy homegrown American values as well as the American wilderness. In the same spirit, William Hornaday, director of the New York Zoological Society, spoke of “members of the lower classes of southern Europe” as being “a dangerous menace to wildlife.”
The Nazis followed such pronouncements with keen approval, pored over Grant’s racist threnody “The Passing of the Great Race” (published in Germany in 1925) and used the 1924 US immigration law as a model for their own efforts in the promotion of racial purity. Dr. Gustav Boeters, a leading German eugenicist, declared in 1926 that “what we racial hygienists promote is by no means new or unheard of. In a cultured nation of the first order — the United States of America — that which we strive towards was introduced and tested long ago. It is all so clear and simple.”
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In the July-August 2005 issue of Sierra Magazine was an article entitled, The Common Good by Jonathan Rowe of the Tomales Bay Institute(http://vault.sierraclub.org/sierra/200507/commongood.asp) The title sounds interesting, but it is little more than a shoddy, poorly-reasoned polemic against the field of economics and the “market-system.” It contains many glaring mischaracterizations of economics and amazingly, in a bizarre feat of circular logic, the author cites methods developed and implemented by economists over many decades as potential solutions to environmental problems that supposedly are beyond the scope of economics. At the same time, the author continually fails to adequately define his terms or offer persuasive evidence to support his grandiose claims. In short, this article appeared anomalous in a magazine that (despite many legitimate polemics against Bush Administration policies) had stayed clear of knee-jerk liberalism and the dubious ideological prescriptions that accompany it.
I have a hatred for people and organizations that criticize economics without having a solid grasp of what it is they are criticizing, and who believe that simply pointing out that there are serious environmental problems in the world and that the world is partly governed by markets is de facto evidence that markets are to blame (i.e. weak correlation is not proof of causation). Whereas this form of naiveté is commonplace amongst some of the more wide-eyed students I come across (i.e. me when I was younger), there is really no excuse for one of the country’s preeminent environmental organizations to be publishing, and thereby sanctioning, such intellectual sophistry.
We are living at a time when there is a strong backlash against environmentalism and pieces like, The Common Good do little more than add fuel to the fire. The majority of Americans are generally supportive of environmental causes, but become wary when environmentalists spend an exorbitant amount of time criticizing the capitalist economic system that has propelled America to such prominence and virtually unparalleled material well-being. While everyone understands that some spheres of life should not be subject entirely to market forces, using overly broad and ill-defined notions of what constitutes the “commons” is more likely to convince people that environmentalists are leftover communists than to draw rightful attention to the many serious problems plaguing open-access resources (it’s also simply sloppy thinking). In addition, with conservatives in charge of all the branches of the Federal Government rallying against the “encroachment of the market system” is clearly not a winning strategy.
Unfortunately, Mr. Rowe and the Sierra Club don’t seem to get it. Charges that economists are largely ignorant and that the “market” is some sort of monster preparing to destroy every last thing on Earth may stoke people’s passions and provide fodder for those who continue to romanticize life in pre-capitalist societies, but it does more harm than good since it obscures rather than clarifies the key causes of environmental degradation.
What is especially frustrating about the perspectives voiced in The Common Good is that free-market principles are actually one of the environment’s greatest allies. Many environmental groups now understand this and recognize that it is actually the absence of markets, or policies that distort them, that are at the root of most environmental degradation (see the speeches by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on this subject).
In the September/October 2005 issue the Sierra Magazine ran a piece highly critical of corporations. While there is much to criticize and dislike about aspects of corporate behavior, this piece also was skewed given that corporations provide so much good for society, including quality goods and services and most of the country’s employment. In one bizarre sentence the author quotes someone who suggests that we enact laws that prohibit all pollution; yes, zero pollution allowed in society! Nonsensical corporate-bashing seemed like another emotional freebie that Sierra just couldn’t resist cashing in on.
I urge members to shift their resources away from the Sierra Club to other environmental organizations that have a healthy respect for the power of markets, such as Environmental Defense, The Nature Conservancy, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. This is one of the beauties of the market; you can let your money do to the talking. And you can rest assured people will listen.
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SOME OF THE SIERRA CLUB’S DIRTY SECRETS
The Sierra Club has evolved from being a nonpartisan defender of US land, water and wildlife to being left-wing globalists in plaid shirts and hiking boots, crippled by a failed ideology of progressive utopianism and a leadership increasingly corrupted by money and power. The sierra club, WWF, GREENPEACE, they all push regulation as the “cure” to our ills, while picking up corporate sponsorship. It’s no coincidence that Waste Management and the sierra club so often lobby together.
The Sierra Club wants to move the clock of history back to the times when wind, sun, and human and animal work were the only direct sources of energy for human endeavor. Since at present time there is no known and tested way of turning the American economy onto wind-and-solar powered, if Sierra Club prevails in its demands then the economy will be ruined and most Americans will have to rely on heavy work to survive, just like their distant ancestors. And yet Sierra Club calls it “progress.” How absurd!
The Sierra Club favors an expanded nanny state to cope with rapidly expanding population and its effects. But, as author Isaac Asimov remarked, “Democracy cannot survive overpopulation… The more people there are the less one individual matters.”
Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope bragged on his blog about his trip to India which included dispensing a cash prize — a new annual award of $100,000 to be given to an Indian organization creating green livelihoods. The Sierra Club is developing its own foreign policy. Pope spread money around like some Chicago ward politician looking for votes and influence.
Actions from the Sierra Club’s home office show a disturbing uptick in Pope’s pursuit of power by suppressing democracy within the organization. The Sierra Club has a membership of 1.3 million. Most are not engaged in its internal politics. They participate in the organization’s many activities, ranging from hikes and local habitat restoration to political action. The Arizona Chapter has people getting active on right-of-way laws, the Arizona Game and Fish Commission, and many extremely boring legislative issues, but nothing at all about the biggest threat to Arizona’s environment.
There is a yearly Board election where one-third of the 15 Directors are chosen. It has been a point of pride that the Sierra Club is a rare non-profit organization that has some degree of membership influence—at least on paper. But even that pretense of democracy is increasingly battered. In 1999 Sierra management sought to make referendums more difficult by more than doubling the number of petition signatures required to place an issue before the membership in the annual elections. The effort followed a bitterly fought ballot initiative in 1998 around the idea that immoderate immigration poses an environmental threat to the United States. (But the proposed changes to bylaws that would have lessened democracy went down to defeat.)
Pope and his management cronies moved to consolidate power in several instances. Even establishment types were horrified at Pope’s arrogance, according to one member:
Project Renewal was launched in February to replace local committees with management-chosen activists who are presumably good at doing what they’re told. Such a basic restructure of power violates the whole foundation upon which many hard-working volunteers have participated for years. 26 chapters voted against Project Renewal.
In 2007 the Sierra Club joined with Pacific Gas and Electric (which supplies power to much of northern California) to distribute compact fluorescent light bulbs. PG&E’s motive was to look good to California regulators, who will pay it a bonus if it cuts consumer energy consumption. The bulbs do save energy, but disposing of old ones is environmentally problematic because of their mercury content. Again, the national leadership took this action on its own with no input from local chapters.
The Sierra Club agreed to endorse Clorox’s new Green Works cleaning products — for an undisclosed sum. This is the first product endorsement ever in the Club’s history. Executive Director Pope was quoted defended his decision in the New York Times [Clorox Courts Sierra Club, and a Product Is Endorsed , by Felicity Barringer, March 26, 2008]:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/business/businessspecial2/26cleanser.html?_r=0
” ‘I won’t pretend it’s not internally controversial; it is. But we decided it was more important to try to create this marketplace’ than to keep the peace. The major task, he said, was ensuring that the products’ ingredients met the Sierra Club’s requirements for being called ‘natural’, a term that has no federally approved definition when it comes to cleaning products.”
There is big money for product endorsements in today’s green marketplace. The Audubon Society signed a deal with Toyota worth $20 million to “fund conservation projects.”
In 2005 there was an LA Times story explaining the reason for Carl Pope’s surprisingly shrill response beginning with the 1998 Club election where mass immigration considered by the membership. It said in part: “[Hedge fund entrepreneur] David Gelbaum insisted that he played no role in the election. He dismissed allegations that he is calling the shots at the club in any other way. “‘None of that is true,” he said. ‘I’m not some Svengali. I’m not that engaged.’ “But he said Pope long had known where he stood on the contentious issue. ‘I did tell Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.’
“Gelbaum, who reads the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión and is married to a Mexican American, said his views on immigration were shaped long ago by his grandfather, Abraham, a watchmaker who had come to America to escape persecution of Jews in Ukraine before World War I.
“‘I cannot support an organization that is anti-immigration. It would dishonor the memory of my grandparents.’ “[The Man Behind the Land, By Kenneth R. Weiss, Los Angeles Times, Oct 27, 2004]
After putting the atavistic anti-American impulses of a wealthy plutocrat above America’s environment, the Sierra Club received over $100 million from him. To protect the secret as they pursued more money, Pope and his henchmen accused insurgents of being racists for advocating the same position that had been the Club’s official policy in 1989: “Immigration to the U.S. should be no greater than that which will permit achievement of population stabilization in the US.”
So the Clorox arrangement had its precedent. What’s the big deal about a little product endorsement when Sierra management has already demonstrated it can be bought? The Clorox deal did cause an uproar within the Sierra Club. The controversy was apparently responsible for the scandalous suspension of the entire Florida chapter: “The biggest environmental group in the US has expelled the leaders of its Florida chapter weeks after the local activists accused the group’s directors of selling out in a corporate endorsement deal with a bleach manufacturer Sierra will receive a portion of the sales from the new Clorox products, called Green Works and made from mostly plant-based ingredients. However, Clorox has a history of being hit with environmental violations for its less green products – in December, just before Sierra agreed to its endorsement, the company was fined $95,000 by the US government for donating illegal Chinese pesticides to charity…”[US environmental group expels Florida chapter amid endorsement row, By Elana Schor, the Guardian, UK, April 7 2008.]
What a tawdry spectacle it was to see a once-honorable organization selling the good name that took a century to build. And it gets worse: “In addition, the Sierra executive director sent a letter to activists saying the Green Works cleaners ‘have been vetted by’ the group’s Toxics committee, suggesting official approval was given. However, Jessica Frohman, who chairs the Toxics committee, said it did not officially sign off on the products. ‘I don’t want people to think we approved this when we did not,’ she said. After the Floridians’ removal, leaders of other state Sierra chapters got a letter from national president Robert Cox warning them not to ‘seek public media coverage’ of the fight using the group’s name.”
The Scots immigrant John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892 with other friends of wilderness “to make the mountains glad.” Sadly, today’s Sierra Club is welcoming foreigners who have no such love of nature, but show their disdain for America and its natural heritage by despoiling the border areas with piles of garbage as they enter illegally from California to Texas. John Muir would be disgusted by what the Sierra Club has become.

Can we see Michael Brune’s total income, his sources of income?