To:  Sierra Club Leaders
     Environmental colleagues

Fr:  Carl Pope
Re:  Ralph Nader attack on environmentalists who are supporting
Vice-President Gore

Yesterday I received from Ralph Nader a letter addressed to concerned
environmental voters, but distributed also through the Nader press
list.  The
letter attacked Vice-President Gore, but went beyond that attack to
criticize
those environmentalists who are endorsing Gore for adopting a "servile
mentality."  While the letter raised, legitimately, a number of valid
issues on
which Nader and Gore differ, it also contained a number of inaccurate
and
utterly unfair attacks.

Additionally, Green Party spokespeople have begun attacking the Sierra
Club, and
other environmentalists who are supporting the Gore-Lieberman ticket, in

increasing harsh terms, terms that go far beyond anything that we have
said or
would in any conceivable world want to say about our differences with
the Nader
candidacy.

I have responded to this attack, and my response is attached.  I would
appreciate it if folks could distribute this as widely as possible to
environmentalists outside the Club.  We will get it out to the entire
Club
leadership list on email.


Ralph Nader
Nader 2000
PO Box 18002
Washington, DC 20036

Dear Ralph:

    Yesterday you sent me(and many other environmentalists) a long
letter
defending your candidacy and attacking "the servile mentality" of those
of us in
the environmental community who are supporting Vice-President Gore.

     I've worked alongside you as a colleague for thirty years.

     Neither the letter nor the tactics you are increasingly adopting in
your
candidacy are worthy of the Ralph Nader I knew.

     The heart of your letter is the argument that "the threat to our
planet
articulated by Bush and his ilk" can now be dismissed.  But you offer no

evidence for this crucial assertion. Based on the polls today Bush is an
even
bet to become the next President, with both a Republican Senate and a
Republican
House to accompany him.

     You have referred to the likely results of a Bush election as being
a "cold
shower" for the Democratic party.  You have made clear that you will
consider it
a victory if the net result of your campaign is a Bush presidency.

     But what will your "cold shower" mean for real people and real
places?

     What will it mean for tens of millions of asthmatic children when
Bush
applies to the nation the "voluntary" approach he's using in Texas to
clean up
the air. And what about his stated opposition to enforcing environmental

standards against corporations?

     What will it mean for Americans vulnerable to water pollution when
Bush
allows water quality standards to be degraded to meet the needs of paper
mills
and refineries as he has consistently done in Texas, most recently at
Lake Sam
Rayburn? And what if he eliminates federal financial support for both
drinking
water and water pollution, as his budget calls for and his record in
Texas (46th
in spending on drinking water) suggests?

     What will it mean for communities of color and poverty located near
toxic
waste sites, when Bush applies his Texas approach of lower standards and
lower
polluter liability to toxic waste clean-up?

     What will a Bush election mean to the Gwich'in people of the
Arctic, when
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is turned over the oil companies and
the
calving grounds of the Porcupine Caribou herd on which they depend are
destroyed
and despoiled?

     What will it mean for the fishing families of the Pacific Northwest
when
Bush amends the Endangered Species Act to make extinction for the
endangered
salmon a legally acceptable option?  If he refuses to remove the dams on
the
Snake River or reduce timber cutting levels to preserve salmon?

     What will it mean for millions of rural Americans whose livelihood,
health
and communities are being destroyed by unregulated factory feeding
operations,
if Bush weakens the Clean Water Act? When he appoints Supreme Court
justices who
complete the task of shutting down access to federal courts for citizens
trying
to enforce environmental laws?

     What will it mean for the wildlife that depend upon our National
Forests
when Bush undoes the Clinton-Gore Administration reforms, reverses their

roadless area protection policy, and restores the timber industry to the
mastery
of the forests and the Forest Service that it enjoyed under his father?
If he
doubles, or triples, the cut on those Forests?

     What will it mean for millions of people in Bangladesh and other
low-lying
countries when an American refusal to confront the problem of global
warming
unleashes the floods and typhoons of a rising ocean upon them?

     Your letter addresses none of these real consequences of a Bush
victory.
Nor has your campaign.  Instead, you indulge yourself in the language of

academic discourse when you claim:


    "Bush's "old school" allegiance to plunder and extermination as
humanity's
appropriate relationship to our world speaks a language effectively
discounted
by the great tradition of naturalists from John Muir to David Brower.
Bush's
blatant anti-environmentalism will lose corporate favor as it loses
popular
support. It is a language of politics fading rapidly, and without a
future."


     Candidate Bush may well be speaking a fading language.  So was
candidate
Reagan in 1980 when he ranted that trees caused air pollution. It is
power,
however, not language, that determines policy.  President Bush would be
vested
with the powers of the government of the United States, and he is an
even more
devoted servant of environmental counter-revolution than Reagan ever
was.

     Because your letter is couched in this language, so divorced from
the real
world consequences of your candidacy, and the real world choices that
face
Americans, it is difficult to respond to all of its selective
misrepresentations
and inaccuracies.  A few samples, however, may show you why I am so
disappointed
in the turn your candidacy has taken:

     You claim that "Earth in the Balance" was "an advertisement for his

calculated strategy and availability as an environmental poseur."  Can
you offer
a single piece of evidence to support this quite astonishing statement?

     You claim that the Clinton Administration stood up to the oil
industry on
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge only because "focus groups have
shown him he
cannot give" it up.In fact, most polls show that the public is somewhat
split on
this issue, and there are certainly no focus groups I know of showing
that it is
a third-rail which no President can cross at his peril. Can you cite
your
evidence?

     You lament that the Administration has "set aside lands not in
National
Parks, but rather in National Monuments...."  You are surely aware that
a
President cannot legally create national parks, which require an act or
Congress; nor can you be under the misapprehension that this Congress
with Don
Young as the head of the House Resources Committee and Frank Murkowski
as his
counterpart in the Senate would have designated these areas as parks
however
long a battle Clinton and Gore might have fought. No, you simply took a
cheap
shot, and ignored the facts.

     You have also broken your word to your followers who signed the
petitions
that got you on the ballot in many states. You pledged you would not
campaign as
a spoiler and would avoid the swing states.  Your recent campaign
rhetoric and
campaign schedule make it clear that you have broken this pledge. Your
response:
you are a political candidate, and a political candidate wants to take
every
vote he can. Very well -- you admit you are a candidate -- admit that
you are,
like your opponents, a flawed one.

     Irresponsible as I find your strategy, I accept that you genuinely
believe
in it.  Please accept that I, and the overwhelming majority of the
environmental
movement in this country, genuinely believe that your strategy is
flawed,
dangerous and reckless.  Until you can answer how you will protect the
people
and places who will be put in harm's way, or destroyed, by a Bush
presidency,
you have no right to slander those who disagree with you as "servile."

      You have called upon us to vote our hopes, not our fears.  I find
it easy
to do so. My hope is that by electing the best environmental President
in
American history, Al Gore, we can move forward.  My fear is that you,
blinded by
your anger at flaws of the Clinton-Gore Administration, may be
instrumental in
electing the worst.

Sincerely yours,


Carl Pope
Executive Director
The Sierra Club

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