Dannie Roettger
POL/215
December 4, 2012
John Derie
Elements that Influence State Government
The special interest group we are going to look at is the Sierra Club. The sierra club is a body of volunteers that come together to fight for the environment. This interest group has offices in every state in the union. As we look at the Sierra Club in whole we will describe what this organization stands for and try to define its relationship two each of the political parties and lastly we will look at how the interest groups influences state government.
According to Carl Pope, “We stand for the principle that ordinary people don’t believe that they’re here to use up the earth and have the bank account exhausted when they die; that most people really see the planet as an ongoing enterprise. They’re inspired by nature. They want to leave it behind and they feel responsible for it Pope (2008), (para. 1)”. That being said the sierra club is an organization with of over 750,000 members with a common goal in mind (Pope, 2008). That goal is to protect the earth we live on. What is unique about the sierra club is depending on what state you’re in, the sierra club will come at you in very different ways depending on the cause at hand. This means if you live in California, the sierra club will fight to protect water rights and conservation as well as air pollution. If one lives in Kentucky then the sierra club will fight you on coal while promoting wind industry. The unique thing the sierra club has going for it is that it has many different platform to speak from while fighting for a common goal.
One of the ways the sierra club has found to gain support on different issues is to a line its self with different political party to gain the support and win favor with state voters. What this means is that the sierra club leverages power of their net work of volunteers and members in every state for the chance to help elect
References: Pope, C. (2008). Big Think. Retrieved from http://bigthink.com/ideas/2378 Sierra Club Endorses John Yarmuth. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.kentucky.sierraclub/newsroom The Republicans, the sierra club and the environment. (2012). Retrieved from http://povcrystal.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-republicans-sierra-club-and.html