Enviromental, PoliticalDear Member,
Sierra Club Progress Report
I’m not going to sugar coat it - we have tough times ahead.
George Bush’s re-election means that clean air and water, wild lands and wildlife will undergo unprecedented attacks in the coming years, maybe as early as the lame-duck session of Congress that has just begun.
You care, and your past support for the Sierra Club speaks to your commitment to protecting America’s natural legacy. So I want you to be among the first to be updated on our plans for the future. We’ve won some key battles under Bush, and we’ll win more - with the ongoing support of people like you.
We are enormously grateful for your past support. This brief report outlines our plans and strategies for putting your investment in us to good use.
While the results of this election are heartbreaking, we can not let that slow us down - we must move forward to confront our new challenges, and quickly. We must continue to hold Congress and the Bush Administration accountable. We must protect our basic right to speak out and publicly counter Bush administration attacks for the next two years (until the mid-term elections) - and they will be very challenging years.
What will the White House try to do with the so-called Bush “mandate”? Pay off their corporate allies by continuing to shred the nation’s environmental safety net. Already, rumors are flying about White House proposals to scrap clean air and water laws in favor of a “market-based” approach. That’s Washington-ese for putting the foxes in charge of the hen house.
There are already new calls to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. No wildlands will be safe if there’s something to extract or mine or sell. They will try to limit the Endangered Species Act. We can expect more government secrecy, more suppression of basic scientific data, even efforts to deny citizens the basic right to appear in court to defend themselves and their communities against environmental assaults and dangers. There will be continued attempts to play games with science and to deny the acute affects of global warming even as they become more obvious all around us.
The Sierra Club will oppose such moves and block as many as we can. It’s what we’ve been doing for the last four years, and we’re very good at it. We are the strongest we have ever been as a grassroots organization, with more members and more volunteers than ever before in our history.
Going forward, what counts is whether we persevere in working together to reach out to new allies. And there will be many - the American people, including many of those who voted for George Bush, will never embrace his short-sighted environmental vision. So we have to amplify our grassroots efforts - we have to continue talking to - and listening to - people we don’t yet know. We must tell stories, not just recite statistics. We must tap into a belief that we know most Americans share - that protecting our environment and our families’ health is an important American value that is of direct consequence to their lives. We must be clear that no political party, no social movement has a monopoly on “values.”
In closing, let me thank you once again for your very generous support in the past. It is your support that enables the Sierra Club to hold the forces of environmental devastation at bay. We now have the certainty of a very difficult year ahead. But together, we will rise to this challenge.
Thank you again.
Sincerely,
Carl Pope
Executive Director
Sierra Club
P.S. You’ve already been so generous in the past. If you can, please make an urgent donation online.
P.P.S. Immediate Action Needed: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Under Attack
The Bush Administration is pushing hard again to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development. The Sierra Club is urging members and supporters to sign a petition to Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader-elect, urging him to rally opposition to the Bush Energy Plan and any proposal to allow development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Sierra Club
85 Second St.
San Francisco, CA 94105
