Sierra Club has endorsed Al Gore for president in the 2000 election. The
following is not an endorsement by Sierra Club of any other candidate.
cc: Carl Pope
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It is a reasonable expectation that Sierra Club's national executive director
will work to support the candidates endorsed by the Club for national
offices, provided that he or she can do so in good conscience.
However, Carl Pope, Sierra Club's executive director, has gone far beyond
just endorsing Sierra Club's endorsed candidate for president. In an article
in the October issue of Sierra Magazine, and in a recent open letter to Ralph
Nader posted to several Sierra Club listserves, Carl Pope attacked Ralph
Nader's campaign for the presidency.
The Nader campaign this year is the best thing that has happened in American
politics in decades. The Nader campaign promises to build a lasting
green-labor-progressive coalition that provides our only hope of stopping the
present corporate attacks on our environment based on ever increasing
consumption of non-renewable resources. The prosperity of the Clinton-Gore
era has been based on unprecedented destruction of non-renewable resources,
from old-growth forests to fossil fuels to farmland lost to urban sprawl.
This environmental destruction has occured both in the U.S. and on the
territory of our trading partners such as China.
Al Gore is a strong supporter of agricultural genetic engineering, a new
threat to the environment that equals in its potential for harm to life the
threat of nuclear war.
Yet, incredibly, it appears that Mr. Pope has been trying to convince Ralph
Nader that his campaign for president is somehow ethically wrong, and that
therefore Nader should drop out of the race.
The statements in Pope's article and letter demand to be answered. The
following letter from United Methodist Minister Paul Burks to Carl Pope,
answering Pope's October 27 open letter to Ralph Nader, is one such answer.
Those who wish to comment on Paul Burks' letter, or to comment on my posting
of it, are respectfully asked to post their comments to this listserve. Any
such comments sent to me will be posted to this list.
We are reminded of a quote from Mahatma Ghandi:
First, they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win.
Thomas Mathews
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Sent: Monday, October 30, 2000 10:54 PM
Subject: [GPTx-Media] Sierra Club's endorsement of Gore
RESPONSE TO SIERRA CLUB - Paul Burks
Carl,
I greatly respect your leadership of the Sierra Club as executive director.
Since you were executive of the League of Conservation Voters and I was
Sequoia Newmagazine editor (North California Ecumenical Council) in the same
building at 942 Market Street, I have admired your growth in a very difficult
job in a very difficult time for the Earth and for the Sierra Club. And you
know that I have been greatly excited by your growing support of links
between faith-based earthcare activists and environmental
activists--particularly Sierra Club folks. The special issue of Sierra
Magazine on Religion and the Environment (Nov/Dec 1998) was outstanding
and your introductory editorial (pages 14-15), entitled "Reaching Beyond
Ourselves: Its time to recognize our allies in the faith community," was
truly inspired, very timely, and moving. Thanks again for all of that
leadership and wisdom. As you also know, Carl, I built bridges between
American Friends Service Committee and other faith-based communities by
serving on the Board of Friends of the Earth for over ten years, during most
of which David Brower was chairman and inspired leader. How much I learned
from him! During that time and up to the present, whenever David had issue,
style, and direction differences with the Sierra Club Board (where he served
in 1983, 86, 95, 98, and 2000), I have almost always agreed with him,
particularly during the last year. This is in spite of the fact that I was
among the FOE Board majority which removed David as Chairman in the late
1980's because he would not obey the financial mandates of the Board. I was
most proud of David when he strongly criticized those in the Sierra Club who
tried to prevent Chad Hanson and Michael Dorsey from being re-elected to
the Board early this year, referring to these "promising young leaders in the
Club and in the environmental movement world-wide" (quoting Brower) as
"divisive," when what was wanted by some on the Board and in the Club was
"peacemaker candidates." This led to the world's most famous and effective
environmentalist to publicly resign from the Board in May, saying: "The
planet is being trashed, but the Board has no real sense of urgency."
As you know, Carl, when Brower resigned he urged the Board to endorse Ralph
Nader for president, referring to Al Gore's "tawdry environmental record."
More recently David referred to an internal Sierra Club memo by Board member
Michael Dorsey saying that under Clinton and Gore the nation's natural
resources "have been held hostage to the highest bidder,
especially by the oil companies." Brower said of that memo: "Gore was a major
disappointment and I agree with Michael," adding that he was quite pleased
when the Friends of the Earth backed Bill Bradley rather than Al Gore in the
primaries. In spite of powerful statements by Brower and Dorsey and others,
including in local chapter of the Club, the Board went on to endorse Al
Gore for president.
Your letter of October 27 to Ralph Nader is essentially a justification of
the Club's endorsement of Al Gore because George Bush is so dangerous to the
environmental agenda. It fails to deal with the primary focus of Nader's
letter of October 20 to concerned environmental voters. He powerfully
describes a force far more dangerous to the earth and to the environmental
agenda than that of George Bush, which he summarizes in this sentence: "His
[Bush] archaic vision of environmental rape and pillage, of denial and
delusion, is pathetically out of touch with the vision of most Americans."
Carl, you then go on to outline and emotionally address the genuine
dangers of Bush's "old school"[Nader's words] without commenting on the force
which Nader describes as far more dangerous.
For the benefit of those receiving this email who may have read your reply to
Nader, but not Nader's letter to concerned environmental voters,
I need to state what the "force far more dangerous to earth and the
environmental agenda" presented by Ralph Nader was. I will quote Nader to do
so:
"A carefully crafted alliance of multinational corporations is now fully
conversant in the language of environmentalism. ....[These] multinational
corporations...view environmental issues as yet another barrier to profit
making that can be deflected or compromised with the appropriate political
proxies. For these corporations, the environmental agenda must be manipulated
to corporate advantage. Big corporations are prepared to offer vast sums of
money for seduction of environmentalists and systematic compromise of their
ideals.
"Vice President Albert Gore is preeminent among the politicians who have
seized on this new corporate prerequisite for investment as an avenue for
career advancement. ...Earth in the Balance [was] Gore's script for his
re-emergence as a national politician.... ...Gore is the prototype for the
bankable, Green corporate politician. He has literally written the book.
"We can document Gore's commitment to his role as broker of environmental
voters for corporate cash. ...Some examples:"
Nader's letter then goes on for four pages to give 14 examples. They include
1) Gore's compromise on the Kyoto Global Climate Change Treaty to commit the
US to very small reductions in greenhouse gases; 2) his support of corporate
oil exploration in the Arctic National Petroleum Reserve and the selling off
of the Elk Hills Petroleum reserve to Occidental Oil, his family's patron
company, in the largest privatization in American government history; 3) the
failure to even propose any across-the-board auto fuel standard increases
during its 8-year administration, with auto fuel efficiency now down to 24.5
mpg, the lowest level since 1980 vs the Clinton-Gore 1992 campaign promise
that in 2000 the average would reach 40 mpg; 4) taxpayer subsidies to fossil
fuel and atomic power companies continue unabated, despite Gore's unfulfilled
commitment to truly clean alternative fuels, with the administration instead
wasting over one billion dollars in a giveaway to GM, Ford, and Chrysler for
a clean energy [clean auto] project that never produced even a single
prototype; 5) on resource extractions, the public good has been sold to the
highest bidders under the guise of conservation: grazing, helicopter logging,
hard rock mining, logging subsidies in the Tongass and White River Forests to
corporate friends, and the Headwaters old-growth forest deal with Charles
Hurwitz which will lose 53,000 of its 60,000 acres; 6) on toxics and dioxin,
the Clinton-Gore EPA dioxin reassessment has never been formally released to
prohibit cancer-causing pesticides or ingredients in food; 7) Gore's failure,
as promised, to stop the permitting of the WTI hazardous waste incinerator,
with WTI giving thousands of dollars to the Democratic campaign fund; 8) the
administration backtracking on its promise to implement "chlorine-free
paper," which would stop dioxin production in papermaking--when the chemical
industry made the slightest squeal; 9) on genetic engineering, the
administration allowed the release of re-combinant Bovine Growth Hormone with
faulty science provided by Monsanto, the manufacturer, with the
administration insisting (as did the prior Bush regime) that genetically
engineered foods were "substantially equivalent" to bred crops and any
opposition seen as "obstacle to free trade" under the WTO which Gore (and
Bush) strongly support; 10) the administration failing to impose sanctions
against countries that break international law by engaging in commercial
whaling, countries such as Norway and Japan; 11) administration deals for
ozone-depleting chemical use such as the pesticide Methyl Bromide to the
benefit of large agribusinesses and the detriment of farmworkers, consumers,
and school children; 12) the Everglades recovery plan, which allows massive
commercial development all around its boundaries, debts called in by the
sugar industry and local power brokers; and 13) US environmental protection
which is superceded by WTO-based, global corporate interests, sacrificing
dolphins, sea turtles, citizen protection from PCBs imported in order to keep
waste incinerators profitable.
Nader summarizes this Clinton-Gore administration environmental litany,
observing that Al Gore never challenges the despoilers, developers, and
polluters if there is an easier back door exit--especially one out of public
view. And that Gore [and Bush], like Clinton before him, totally supports
corporate economic globalization, with its closed door, non-democratic WTO
process that values only money.
In support of his Green Party campaign, Ralph Nader says to concerned
environmental voters: "My candidacy offers... an opportunity to disengage
from this con-servation con game as defined and played by Gore and his
corporate allies. I offer the environmental community an opportunity to
reassert its independence as a potent and uncompromising political force.
...Power must come back from the corporations to whom it has been auctioned."
Carl, your two and one-half page letter to Nader never gives readers a hint
that his primary focus is on the danger of multinational corporation power in
shaping the environmental agenda to suit its power-seeking and profit-making
purposes. It never cites Nader's basic charge that Al Gore
has been taken over by the funding capacity of corporations for politicians
seeking high office. Indeed, your letter only includes the words
"corporations" and "corporate" once, and that is in reference to George Bush,
not Al Gore. And you do not mention corporate globalization or the WTO even
once. You have grossly and, I fear, purposely misinterpreted what Ralph
Nader's letter to concerned environmental voters was all about. Your letter
has done a serious disservice both to Nader and to your own members. And why?
Your letter was written in the interest of justifying the Club's endorsement
of Al Gore. Worse yet, your letter uses the very emotional "fear of George
Bush factor" to avoid responding to Nader's real message, to cast him and his
campaign strategy as "flawed, dangerous, and reckless," and to push Nader
supporters to vote for Al Gore.
This is, indeed, a strategy beneath the dignity of the Sierra Club and your
office. I personally think it calls for a public apology to an American of
the highest possible integrity and commitment. And it calls for a reissuing
of your letter truly dealing with the corporate control issues raised by
Ralph Nader. Beyond this matter, let us all hope that Americans will
increasingly vote their conscience and concerns, using head and heart to
encourage a just, peaceful, and sustainable future for their children and
grandchildren, rather than voting out of fear of the lesser of two evils.
If Vice-President Gore loses this race, he has only himself to blame,
certainly not those who vote for Ralph Nader out of their deepest values and
beliefs and on behalf of a new day for democracy in this country and around
the world.
Best wishes to you in your vital leadership role with the Sierra Club,
Paul Burks
United Methodist Minister
Sierra Club-Loma Prieta Chapter (former ExCom Vice Chair)
Editor Emeritus-EarthLight: Magazine of Ecology and Spiritualit
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