In 2005, the Sierra Club decided to change its focus. Club members, Mr. Pope said, had a clear message: “Do climate. Climate, climate, climate.” The club further realized that stopping bad things, like coal plants, was only part of the solution. “We had to learn how to encourage good stuff, and that’s been a learning experience I think for everyone in the club,” he said. Sierra Club President Carl Pope served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in India in the 1960's.
Environmentalist Carl Pope Steers Toward the Middle
An Environmentalist Steers Toward the Middle
By Kate Galbraith
Is Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, forging a new path of environmental pragmatism?
Mr. Pope quibbles with the description, but his actions seem to set a different tone for an organization whose founder, John Muir, once railed against the “gross heathenism of civilization.”
In January, the 800,000-member Club entered a partnership with Clorox to create a greener cleaning product, which has sold well.
Mr. Pope has also gone around the country endorsing the vision of T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oilman who wants to convert the nation’s vehicle fleet to natural gas (see video).
And Mr. Pope has backed big solar power projects in the California desert, which some Club members would rather keep pristine.
What’s behind all this? In 2005, the Sierra Club decided to change its focus. Club members, Mr. Pope said, had a clear message: “Do climate. Climate, climate, climate.” The club further realized that stopping bad things, like coal plants, was only part of the solution. “We had to learn how to encourage good stuff, and that’s been a learning experience I think for everyone in the club,” he said.
Mr. Pope’s cozying up to Clorox and Mr. Pickens has displeased many members. He also seems less vitriolic than many greens on nuclear power, which is heavily subsidized with tax credits and liability caps.
“The fact about nuclear power is, it isn’t safe yet, but maybe it could be. But it’s certainly not affordable,” he said.
When asked about the fact that renewable energy also receives subsidies, he replied, “It’s a phenomenal difference of scale. I’d actually rather get rid of everyone’s subsidies.”
“As long as we’re subsidizing oil and coal,” he added, “it’s fair to give everybody else the same help.”
Mr. Pope shows no ambivalence about the Club’s endorsement of Senator Barack Obama for president. Though Senator John McCain was an early promoter of a cap-and-trade policy to keep down carbon dioxide emissions, Mr. Pope has turned against him: “We’re very disappointed in what has happened to Senator McCain,” he said. “Once upon a time he was a maverick who appeared to be willing to stand up to the oil wing of the Republican party.”
But then came the “drill, baby, drill” chant at the Republican Convention, and the choice of Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, as his running mate.
Ms. Palin is “somebody who has never met an oil company development she didn’t like,” said Mr. Pope. She is someone, he continued, “who does not want to protect polar bears from the oil industry, who says she doesn’t know what causes global warming, and who is in favor of killing wolves from helicopters.”
