India RPCV and Sierra Club head Carl Pope speaks at Lewis and Clarke College
Sierra Club's Carl Pope speaks on campus
Talk is titled "Restoring the American Environmental Dream"
Posted April 27, 2004
(Portland, Ore.)—According to Carl Pope, environmental progress has been part of the American dream since Theodore Roosevelt took up the cause. But Pope says that recently the dream has begun to fade. Pope, executive director of the national Sierra Club, will speak at Lewis & Clark on Monday, May 3, at 5 p.m. His talk is titled “Restoring the American Environmental Dream.” The event, in Agnes Flanagan Chapel, is free and open to the public.
“Carl Pope has been instrumental in rallying the nation to environmental awareness,” said Eban Goodstein, professor of economics and department chair. “At the heart of his message is a reminder that environmental protection was, and is, something that ordinary Americans agreed upon, something that brought us together, and something we need to restore.” Pope is on a national tour promoting his new book, “Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress,” coauthored with Paul Rauber.
Pope was appointed executive director of Sierra Club in 1992, following several decades of service to the organization as associate conservation director, political director and conservation director. According to Sierra Club, Pope’s leadership has led to the protection of nearly 10 million acres of wilderness areas including Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and California’s Giant Sequoias National Monument. In 1994, Pope worked with Sierra Club staff and volunteers to collect 1.2 million signatures for an environmental bill of rights. Recently Sierra Club worked to reverse the federal government’s position against new rules that would lower the amount of arsenic in the nation’s drinking water.
Pope is active in other community efforts and has served on the boards of the California League of Conservation Voters, Public Voice, National Clean Air Coalition and California Common Cause. He is the author of “Sahib, an American Misadventure in India” and “ Hazardous Waste in America.” He earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and spent two years in India with the Peace Corps.
Pope’s lecture is sponsored by Lewis & Clark’s environmental studies program. The college is located at 0615 S.W. Palatine Hill Road. There is a small fee for parking in campus lots. For more information, call 503-768-7626.
