Carl Pope

Is the leader of the Sierra Club fighting hard enough against Bush's pillage and plunder policies?

By Amy Standen

April 29, 2002 | On Thursday, after weeks of heated debate, the Senate passed a controversial energy bill. Roundly condemned by environmental groups, the bill made major concessions to nuclear and fossil fuel producers while abandoning nearly every attempt at conservation.

The Senate bill "takes us backwards," says Carl Pope, the former Peace Corps volunteer who has served as executive director of the Sierra Club since 1992. And when the Senate goes into conference with House members (who will bring along their even less environment-friendly bill) to draft a final version, the result could be still more disastrous for many environmental issues. As if to sprinkle more salt in environmental crusaders' wounds, on Friday the administration announced it was getting set to allow the coal mining industry to dump dirt from mountaintop mining into waterways and valleys.

These are dark days for the environmental movement. Since the Bush administration came to office, nearly every week brings a "what fresh hell is this?" feeling to eco circles. The oil, gas and nuke-friendly Bushies began their reign by pulling the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol to curb global warming and quickly went on to call for expanded oil drilling in public lands across the country, including Alaska and the Rocky Mountains. Following Sept. 11, the administration seized on national security anxieties to push harder for its energy-inefficient policies, putting conservationists on the defensive as Saddam sympathizers.

In the face of the Bush administration's pro-industry offensive, the leading environmental groups have seemed curiously quiet, with the exception of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has become a thorn in the White House's side over the secretive Bush-Cheney energy report. Some critics wonder if the major environmental organizations, the Sierra Club among them, have lost their fight.

Why, for example, was Sen. Trent Lott so successful in convincing many Americans, and fellow senators, that the proposal to raise Detroit's fuel efficiency standards was really just a ploy to force soccer moms to give up their SUVs? And why has the Bush team been able to frame the debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as an effort to reduce dependence on foreign oil when, in fact, the estimated oil reserves in ANWR are roughly equivalent to only six months of U.S. supply, and wouldn't be available for another seven to 10 years?

Part of the problem, says Mark Dowie, author of "Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century," is that the Sierra Club and other groups have focused too much of their efforts on gaining access to government officials, even blatantly hostile ones like Vice President Cheney, who seem allergic to the concept of conservation. "Why," asks Dowie, "do they want to sit down with a guy who pukes every time he hears the word 'environment'?"

Access goes both ways, says Dowie. And, as a result of their naive emphasis on lobbying, environmental leaders have allowed themselves to be showcased by government officials who seek to appear sympathetic to environmental causes, while doing nothing to actually advance them.

To be fair, the last two weeks have seen a couple of important victories for the environmental movement. On April 18, the Senate voted to block oil drilling in the ANWR. The Alaska refuge is one of the United States' largest remaining pristine nature preserves, home to hundreds of species, including grizzly and polar bears, musk oxen and the calving grounds for 130,000 migrating caribou. It's also one of the few parts of Alaska's Coastal Plain that haven't already been opened up to oil exploration.

Then, on Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that the government need not pay landowners who have been issued temporary moratoriums on developing their land. The decision makes it easier for groups to carry out surveys of vulnerable areas -- like Lake Tahoe, the subject of the Supreme Court case -- while environmental impact studies are done.

And judging by Al Gore's recent rebirth as a fighting nature lover, environmental issues are likely to play a major role in the 2004 elections.

Are the mainline environmental leaders also finally getting ready to roar? Carl Pope says he is learning from the movement's recent missteps. Last month, for instance, Sens. John McCain of Arizona and John Kerry of Massachusetts withdrew a proposal to enforce Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE), which would have forced automakers to increase gas efficiency to 36 miles per gallon by 2015, calling the proposal a "Pyrrhic effort." Enforcing CAFE standards would have saved about three times as much oil per year as could ever have been extracted in the same period from ANWR -- and maintained that savings long after ANWR would have tapped out.

Failing to rally public opinion around the McCain/Kerry proposal was "a mistake," Pope now concedes. The Sierra Club and other environmental organizations simply weren't prepared, he says, for the onslaught of spin that came out of the anti-conservation camp during the CAFE debates.

Along with injecting more vigor into the Sierra Club's political battles, Pope also has to contend with breakaway factions from within his own organization that have long criticized the club for not being aggressive enough, particularly on issues like commercial logging in public forests.

I reached Pope by phone in New Haven and again at the Sierra Club offices in San Francisco. We talked about how the club was squeezed out of the drafting of the energy bill, why he feels there's little hope of reforming the oilmen in the Bush administration, and what it would take for the country's most venerable membership-driven environmental organization to remove the gloves and start fighting harder.

What was your reaction to Thursday's approval of the Senate energy bill?

You can't make a silk purse out of two sows' ears. We have a House energy bill that will take us backwards very quickly and a Senate energy bill that will take us backwards somewhat more slowly. Neither is what the American people wanted, asked for or need. What we needed was a proposal that would reduce our dependence on oil, that would increase our reliance on renewable energy resources and that would protect and take care of America instead of turning over huge swaths of our country to irresponsible oil, gas and nuclear industries. So, we think the American people need to say to both their senators and their representatives, "Thanks but no thanks. We're not going to take this deal. And we'll continue our conversation with you at the ballot box."

Was the Sierra Club consulted in the drafting of the energy bill? Did you feel like you, or other environmental groups, had any influence in shaping it?

No, we were not consulted. They called us up -- they said, "Send us some stuff." [The administration staff members making the calls] had been told by [Bush officials], "If the stuff they send you doesn't agree with what you have, throw it away" -- and that's what they did.

What about the other environmental groups?

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