Interest Group Report

INTEREST GROUP REPORT

The Sierra Club
John Muir made the incomparable Yosemite Valley the center of his experience. Soon his words reached the larger audience of the New York Tribune and other influential publications, and he was writing that the Sierra should be explored by everyone, and permanently protected as a recreational resource accessible to all. In 1889 Muir embarked on an excursion in northern Yosemite with Robert Underwood Johnson. The two planned a campaign for a Yosemite National Park, a campaign that succeeded the following year when Congress established the park. Sierra Club was founded on May 28 with 182 charter members in 1892 The Sierra Club 's charter members elected Muir president, an office he held until his death in 1914.
In the first decade of the 1900s, the Sierra Club became embroiled in the famous Hetch Hetchy Reservoir controversy that divided preservationists from "resource management" conservationists.
The Sierra Club served its members as a social and recreational society, conducting outings, improving trails and building huts and lodges in the Sierras, it had some 7,000 members in 1950.
In September 2005, the Sierra Club held its first Sierra Summit in San Francisco. Approximately 1,000 volunteers from around the country, selected by their chapters and groups, were delegates; some nondelegate members also attended. In 2008, the Sierra Club endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President, citing "his strong record of support for clean air, wetlands protection, and clean energy.
The Sierra Club has several goals and creates campaigns to dedicate mainly on each goal they pursue.
The Beyond Coal campaign’s main objective is to replace dirty coal with clean energy by mobilizing grassroots activists in local communities to advocate for the retirement of old and outdated coal plants and to prevent new coal plants from being built.
The Resilient Habitats campaign’s main objective is to protect wildlife habitat from climate change.
Youth and Diversity campaign is about how people of every age and background embrace the Sierra Club 's motto to "explore, enjoy and protect the planet."
The Beyond Oil campaign’s main goal is to block the most dangerous oil projects, eliminate the outsized influence of the oil industry, raise and defend strong fuel-efficiency and pollution standards, and accelerate the transition to cleaner cars and trucks.
Sierra Club Water Sentinels work to protect, improve and restore our waters by fostering alliances to promote water quality monitoring, public education, and citizen action.
Beyond Natural Gas campaign’s main goal is to close industry loopholes, clean up drilling, protect our parks, and stop liquefied natural gas exports.

To become a member of The Sierra Club you have to sign up on the website and choose an amount of dollars to pay monthly and go to every event.

The current president of The Sierra Club is Robin Mann Robin Mann grew up outside Wilmington, Delaware, near a pond and stream where the springtime nights were alive with spring peepers, small chorus frogs whose high-pitched calls "made the air vibrate."
After starting a family, she lived in rural Connecticut, and got active with the local Sierra Club as newsletter editor, pasting up copy at the local newspaper plant. She moved to Pennsylvania and started working with Chapter Director Jeff Schmidt on nutrient pollution of the Chesapeake Bay. There she found her niche in wetlands and water quality protection and developed the expertise to join and later lead the Club 's national campaign work in that area.

The currently proposed legislation is called Sierra Club 2012 Legislative Priorities for Washington:
This year the sierra club presents acute challenges to their efforts to advance an environmental agenda at the State Capitol. At the Sierra Club, they believe that environmental protections improve their quality of life and are essential to a long-term sustainable economy. Environmental programs and policies may have upfront costs, but will prevent staggering future costs. In 2012, their priorities in the Legislature are no rollbacks of environmental standards in a difficult budget situation; sustain I-937, the Renewable Energy voter-approved standards; ensure clean water and realistic, data-based management of limited water resources; sustainable transit funding in a transportation budget that emphasizes maintenance.

There are also some legislations that’s been passed with The Sierra Club help like Priority Legislation to combat global warming, legislation limiting solar permit fees, The Capitol Watch legislation, 2011 Legislature, Sustainable and Equitable Transit Funding, The 2011 Clean Water Jobs Act, REAL ID Act was passed as part of the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief.

“The Sierra Club had taken money, gobs of it, from an industry that we in the grassroots have been in the fight of our lives to oppose. The largest, most venerable environmental organization in the United States secretly aligned with the very company that seeks to occupy our land, turn it inside out, blow it apart, fill it with poison. All for the goal of extracting a powerful heat-trapping gas, methane, that plays a significant role in climate change.
National Sierra Club served as the political cover for the gas industry and for the politicians who take their money and do their bidding. It had a hand in setting in motion the wheels of environmental destruction and human suffering. It was complicit in bringing extreme fossil fuel extraction onshore, into our communities, farmlands, and forests, and in blowing up the bedrock of our nation. And I can’t get over it”.
Sandra Steingraber

My conclusions and thoughts about The Sierra Club is very positive, since what they do and aim for is to explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of earth, to practice and promote the use of the earth 's ecosystems and resources responsibly, to educate and recruit humanity to restore and protect the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out all these objectives.
I think not every organization is perfect, sometimes they can fail in some other things like projects, campaigns, but it doesn’t mean that they are a bad organization since the impact they have made worldwide has been huge and successful. The founder of The Sierra had a purpose and a goal, he build the organization and through years people around the world has been joining The Sierra Club since is a positive and good cause to support and they have done several campaigns that have helped a lot like protecting rivers, the formation of Blue-Green Alliance that pursue a joint public policy agenda reconciling workers ' need for good jobs with mankind 's need for a cleaner environment and safer world. It also has chapters across the country. Each chapter offers opportunities for hikes and other outings, activism on local and state issues.
I think that the fact they don’t focus just in the environment but with thwarting industry and obstructing technological progress is a positive thing as well.

Links: http://socialistworker.org/2004-1/494/494_06_SierraClub.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Club#Organization
http://activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/o/194-sierra-club

Links: http://socialistworker.org/2004-1/494/494_06_SierraClub.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Club#Organization http://activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/o/194-sierra-club