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Background on Sierra endorsement of Clinton

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Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 13:29:20 -0700 (PDT)
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Background Briefing:  Sierra Club, Selling the Environment Short? or Out?
from Draft Nader For President Clearinghouse, l-888-Nader 96
	
Just four years ago, founding members of the Arkansas chapter of the Sierra
Club resigned over the Club's endorsement of Bill Clinton(Atlanta Journal
and Const., Nov. 2, 1992).  The Arkansas folks knew well Clinton's record of
appeasement on forest, water quality, and toxic incinerators.  Even so the
national Sierra Club leadership ignored the warning of local activists and
chose to endorse a presidential candidate for only the second time.  Now
after four years of environmental flip-flops, betrayals, and election eve
hocus-pocus by the Clinton administration, the Sierra Club has repeated its
mistake by endorsing Clinton and Gore yet again, in the process it has
betrayed the environmental conscience of its membership.

>From the opening hours of the administration began the retreat from the high
minded environmental promises of the '92 campaign.  First there was the WTI
hazardous waste incinerator located outside E. Liverpool, Ohio which Al Gore
had promised repeatedly to shut down.  Within weeks of taking office,
operating permits were issued.  This was followed by Interior Secretary
Bruce Babbitt's destructive deal with the sugar barons of South Florida,
dooming vast acreage's of the Everglades.  Then the administration
capitulated to the demands of Western Democrats and yanked from its initial
budget proposals to reform grazing, mining, and timber practices on federal
lands.  In April, Clinton convened a Timber summit in Portland, Oregon.
dominated by logging interests; the predictable outcome of this session was
a plan to restart clear-cutting in the ancient forests of the Pacific
Northwest for the first time in three years.  Then the administration pulled
out every stop to secure the passage of the North American Free Trade
Agreement(NAFTA) which has been an unprecedented environmental disaster on
both sides of the border.  They repeated the mistake a year later by pushing
through an updated version of the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade(GATT) which gave the World Trade Organization the ability to strike
down American environmental laws.  In July of '95 the administration dealt
its heaviest blow to the American environment by signing the so-called
Salvage Logging Rider, a bill which suspended the application of all
environmental laws governing federal forests.  And on the eve of the
Democratic convention, President Clinton gave the food and chemical
industries a victory they had sought for 40 years when he signed a bill
striking down the Delaney clause, a law that prohibited the addition of
carcinogens to processed foods.  This presidential action is the environment
equivalent of signing the welfare bill.  In each of these instances, the
Sierra Club had an official position in opposition to the actions taken by
the administration.  But the Sierra Clubs recent endorsement of the
Clinton/Gore administration mentions none of these egregious actions.  

There are two ways to judge the administration, by one standard one examines
the first two years with a Democratic Congress; this was one of the least
productive periods in environmental politics.  By another standard one
examines the actions of the Clinton administration in its second two years
facing the Republican Congress.  Clinton's record is marked by a paucity of
executive actions in blunting the excesses of the Republicans.  

Now lets look at the positions Nader has taken.  He was one of the most
visible opponents of NAFTA and GATT; he attacked the abridgment of
environmental laws.  He has been one of the few people to talk about energy
and transportation issues, both critical to the environment.  Nader has
opposed the Dolphin Death bill and the gutting of the Delaney Clause.  On
many important issues, Nader stood firm with the Sierra Club, yet the Sierra
Club ignores his candidacy.  Does the Sierra Club mention in its endorsement
press release any weak points of the administration?  None.

But many rank and file Sierra Club members are not surprised by this
endorsement.  Indeed, earlier this year, the membership of the Sierra Club
voted 2 to 1 in favor of an initiative requiring the Club to support an end
to logging on federal lands.  This measure was fiercely fought by the Club's
executive director Carl Pope, the paid staff, and most of the Club's
directors.  It's not surprising therefore that in the six months since the
overwhelming vote in favor of this policy, the Club's lobbyists have failed
to get a bill introduced in Congress, and have signed off on compromises
that allow continued public lands logging, such as recently in regards to
the Tongass National Forest.  

"It is shameful that the Sierra Club would endorse [Bill Clinton], someone
of so many environmental promises and so little environmental protections",
said Winona LaDuke, Native American environmentalist and Green Party
vice-presidential candidate.
  "One can't help but think that the leadership continues to be out of touch
with the sentiments of its membership," stated Linda Martin, a former Sierra
Club of San Diego chapter executive-committee member, and currently National
Coordinator for the Draft Nader for President Clearinghouse.  "In light of
this anti-logging mandate, how could the directors in good conscience
endorse a president who from the start of his term opened up our ancient
forests to the chainsaw as a result of his Option 9 and then sold them out
altogether by signing the Salvage Rider."

David Brower -- a co-founder of the League of Conservation Voters and a
present Director of the Sierra Club -- is  one of many leading
environmentalists critical of the Clinton administration's environmental
record. In a recent Los Angeles Times (7.22.96) endorsement of Nader, Brower
claims that Clinton has "done more to harm the environment and to weaken
environmental regulations in three years than Presidents Bush and Reagan did
in 12 years...After an interim of reading lips, we have seen the regimes of
environmental destruction move from the Great Communicator to the Great
Capitulator."

In a recent written communication, Brower stated that he had hoped that "the
Club would send a message by endorsing Nader."  In the event that the club
felt compelled to endorse Clinton, he exhorted them to use the endorsement
as an attempt to explain how disappointed they were in Clinton's record.

Brower's frankness about Clinton's abysmal job performance stands in stark
contrast to the one-sided blandishments of Clinton/Gore by Sierra Club
President Adam Werbach. "Bill Clinton and Al Gore have demonstrated a strong
commitment to protecting America's environment, for our families and our
future," declared Werbach in Sierra Club's press release announcing the
endorsement(PR Newswire, September 26, 1996).  Instead, the Club used their
endorsement to demonize Dole and Gingrich  ""Sen. Bob Dole is the most
anti-environment Presidential nominee since Earth Day 1970,".stated Pope.
"It took political courage and leadership to stand up to the war on the
environment waged by Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich and other Congressional
leaders" according to Werbach.  In this Sierra Club press release, there is
not one critical sentence about the Clinton administration.

Others have not been so timid in speaking the truth about the Clinton
administration. "Every major environmental move that Clinton has made in the
last four years has included tremendous compensations to corporate
interests... supporting Clinton's environmental agenda is like handing a
mandate to polluting corporations to step up the environmental destruction.
Grassroots groups have never been fooled by Clinton's cosmetic
environmentalism," said Michael Colby, Executive Director of Food & Water, a
national non-profit grassroots environmental and food safety organization
based in Walden, Vermont.  Rep. Carolyn Maloney(D-NY) and 75 members of
Congress sent a letter to Clinton denouncing the Salvage Rider and telling
the President to use his executive powers to immediately stop all logging
under the salvage rider.  The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund and Save
America's Forests put out press releases denouncing the administration for
falsely claiming its hands were tied as far as stopping salvage logging.
Peter Montague of the Environmental Research Foundation has pointed out that
the losses to EPA from Republican attempts to cut its budget could easily be
counterbalanced by stronger enforcement of its own regulations.  Even Tom
Kenworthy in the Washington Post(10/8/96) pointed out that Clinton "often
speaks in virtually the same breath of loosening the government's regulatory
grip on business-worshipping, like his opponent Dole, at the altar of
'common sense' environmentalism that balances real risks against real-world
costs."

Hundreds of SC activists have cried out in anger the club's blind
endorsement of Clinton.  Margaret Hayes-Young, long-time Sierra Club member,
reformer and founder of the Association of Sierra Club Members for Ethical
Environmentalism, stated that  "The leadership of the club is more concerned
with its political access to the leadership of the Democratic Party, than it
is to the interests of its members and the American environment.  The club
is not just arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, they're organizing the
shuffle board games."

At best, the Clinton administration lay dormant for three and half years
only to awaken as the election approached to engage in a series of high
profile media events that in fact were hollow victories at best, and set
dangerous precedents at worst.  Indeed, the Yellowstone, Utah and Headwater
deals allowed Clinton to succeed where Bob Dole had failed in sanctifying
the issue of regulatory takings.  The position of the Clinton government.
now appears to be that we will pay corporations not to break the law. 

 "To greenwash Clinton by contrasting him to Gingrich and the Republican
Congress is like using Mark Furhman to let O.J. Simpson off the hook," said
Bernardo Issel, a spokesperson for the Nader Clearinghouse", "It is
especially ludicrous in light of Clinton's overwhelming lead in the polls
and while a true environmental option of Nader/LaDuke exists to set a
visionary path for the future.. The endorsement ignores Clinton's utter
appeasement of the corporate forces lobbying for anti-environmental laws,
plundering the earth, and polluting our environment."

	
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Dear Sierra Club,

I recently let my _Sierra_ Magazine subscription lapse.
I used to think of it as membership in the Sierra Club, but it became
pretty obvious that there's nothing there to be a "member" of.
A membership organization would pay attention to its members, after
all.  We've been telling you for years how dissatisfied we are, but
Sierra Club doesn't change.

For some, it was the Mitsubishi (a.k.a. Nikon) and General Motors
advertisements in the magazine.  Mitsubishi is the largest commercial
enterprise on Earth, and destroys more rainforest than any other.  For
me it was the Option Nine forest liquidation deal, and your standing
policy of refusing to consider endorsing candidates for office who are
not running as Democrats.  (It's irrelevant whether that policy is
written down or not.  You and I know it's your policy.)  For others, it
was your disgusting and outrageous endorsement of an incumbent President
whose environmental record, by any reasonable measure, has been far
worse than Reagan's or Bush's.

You *could* have endorsed a serious environmentalist candidate who's on
the ballot or qualified as a write-in in 38 states, the Green Party's
candidate, Ralph Nader.

I can't figure out to whom you're trying to sell the magazine.
All the environmentalists I know have given up on you.  Perhaps you're
going after the corporate PR flacks, the way _GARBAGE_ magazine tried
to.  They went out of business with that strategy.  So will you if you
don't snap out of your symbiosis with the Democrat-Republican Party.

Regards,
Cameron Spitzer 
1141 Jonesport CT
San Jose, CA 95131
408-929-7601