Conservation Update for the First Half of 2003
August 2003

MEMORANDUM

To: Life Members
From: Bruce Hamilton, Conservation Director, Sierra Club
Subject: Conservation Update for the First Half of 2003

As I write this, the Sierra Club faces the largest challenge in its 110-year history. Every week we are witnessing a new assault on the environment by the Bush Administration and its allies. I simply cannot thank you enough for your generous support of the Sierra Club, as we fight together against these determined foes of the environment. Let me share my perspective on recent developments.

One week another new anti-environmental federal judge is nominated for a lifetime appointment. Then the Interior Secretary cuts a sweetheart deal and proposes to remove protection for 3 million acres of wilderness study areas in Utah's Redrock Canyonlands. Soon thereafter, the Administration announces it won't apply the roadless area protection program to millions of acres of wilderness in the Tongass and Chugatch National Forests in Alaska.

Through the courts, the Congress, and administrative action, the Bush Administration continues to undermine family planning programs and a women's right to reproductive choice. The Environmental Protection Agency's annual environmental assessment is rewritten in the White House to edit out any references to the threat of global warming. The Senate votes to subsidize the construction of new nuclear power plants and paves the way for renewed oil leasing off the coasts of Florida, California, and New England. The House of Representatives rejects a proposal to concentrate fire prevention funds on fuel reduction in close proximity to threatened communities, and opts instead to allow continued taxpayer-subsidized logging of remote wild forests while blocking citizens from challenging these timber sales in court. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration promotes a bogus "Clear Skies" proposal that will continue to let polluters off the hook for cleaning up their air pollution.

Could it get any worse? What can we do to stop this juggernaut?

At its February meeting this year the Sierra Club Board of Directors unanimously resolved that the Club must muster and focus its energy and resources to counter the Bush Administration's assault on basic American environmental values.

The earth beneath our feet has shifted. We're struggling to be heard in a world preoccupied with war, terrorism and safety. We're dealing with an Administration that shows no respect for our nation's environmental values, and holds nothing sacred. This Administration believes that "business knows best" and that the American people don't even need to know what their own government is doing. They have cynically followed the advice of Frank Luntz, their pollster, and cloaked their destructive environmental policies in rhetoric of environmental compassion.

Indeed, Luntz warned the Administration that the environment was "the single biggest vulnerability for the Republicans and especially, for George Bush." His advice, which the Administration has followed, was not for the Administration to rejoin the American environmental mainstream by changing its policies, but instead for it to change its language. "You cannot allow yourself to be labeled 'anti-environment' simply because you are opposed to the current regulatory configuration. When we talk about 'rolling back regulations' involving the environment, we are sending a signal Americans don't support. If we suggest that the choice is between environmental protection and deregulation, the environment will win consistently," the Republican consultant advised.

America can, and should, do better. We've promised, as a nation, to protect our air and water, our forests and wildlife. But this Administration has defaulted on these promises.

In 1970 we committed to cleaning up the air in every American community. Americans gave existing dirty power plants and refineries more time, because we were promised they would soon be replaced. That didn't happen. Now the Administration suggests that we let profits, not our health, determine whether these power plants will be cleaned up at all, if ever.

The Western Governors, Republican and Democratic alike, suggested two years ago that we unite around the job of protecting rural communities from the risk of fire by adequately funding fire reduction programs. But the new Bush budget actually puts less money into fire prevention around communities, and is blackmailing rural communities -- if they want fire protection, they must sacrifice our old growth forests to pay the bill.

We know how to stop dumping mercury in the environment. But the Administration for nine months suppressed the EPA study showing how bad the problem was, and meanwhile sabotaged an international program to reduce mercury pollution. Administration representatives insisted that instead of cleaning up the mercury, we should warn the public against eating the fish, because this was quicker and cheaper.

Americans overwhelmingly agree that they want their cars, trucks and SUV's to be well designed, and they want the best and latest technology to improve their vehicles' fuel efficiency. The "Freedom Package" -- a readily available set of efficient engineering improvements identified by the Sierra Club -- could be offered on every vehicle sold. A Ford Explorer with the Freedom Package would get 35 mpg, not 19. Instead, the Bush Administration proposed a pathetic 1.5 mpg improvement in fuel efficiency, less than could be achieved by the single improvement of installing better tires. It suggests that to deal with the problem of imported oil we should sacrifice the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the oil industry.

This rejection of well-tested solutions is not myopic -- it is strategic. The Administration believes that if the American people are told they have no good choices, while the Administration continues its anaesthetizing rhetoric, the public will not realize that this grim environmental future is being chosen by the Administration. The intensity and rapidity of their initiatives is not random -- it is calculated. They hope to force us into a defensive posture on so many issues and on behalf of so many places at once that we are overwhelmed and divided.

The Administration is following a strategy of lowering our hopes and dashing our dreams. In place of solutions it proposes defeatism. We are told the debate should be over which of our gains thus far we must sacrifice to save the remainder.

In response, we must rally the American people around three principles: environmental solutions are available and tested; we should not expose families and communities to unnecessary environmental risks; and America can, and should, do better.

The Administration will seek to dominate the media with its message of lowered aspirations and diminished accountability. War and the economy may further depress and dispirit our nation. To rebuild hope we must rebuild community. People can draw hope and vision from their neighbors far more easily than from the evening news or the front page.

The Administration has already learned this lesson. Perhaps the most surprising information learned after the 2002 mid-term elections was that it was not the media that shaped the election results, but grassroots, one to one, neighbor to neighbor outreach and organizing. Done best this year as part of the Republican Party's get-out-the-vote effort. Beneath the radar, in Georgia, Ralph Reed used 2,000 activists trained over the last year and 500 paid staffers to identify voters, down to specific households and to contact them repeatedly with phone calls, mail and visits from party activists. In Colorado, an aggressive absentee ballot program that involved five personal contacts between the campaign and voters gave Senator Wayne Allard the win before Election Day.

No organization in the environmental community has more experience in grassroots organizing than the Sierra Club. Person to person, one to one, communication was our founding tradition. We are a Club. Individuals who share inspiration by nature, a sense of responsibility for preserving nature, and optimism that together we can make a difference.

We have committed ourselves to reinvigorating this inheritance of grassroots organizing expertise, making it the organizational centerpiece of our future, and using it to defeat the anti-environmental forces in 2004 "on the ground."

We count on your support -- as well as that of our many motivated, dedicated volunteers -- because person to person communication and relationship building is a crucial ingredient in helping to resolve this dilemma.

We rolled out a test of this revived neighbor to neighbor approach over Earth Week 2003 in April in over 30 locations across the country from Alaska to Florida. Instead of gathering postcards at Earth Day festivals, we recruited Sierra Club volunteers to go door to door in their neighborhoods and engage in a direct dialog with the community and encourage supporters to display yard signs -- publicly demonstrating their support for local environmental protection. We now plan to build on those contacts and broaden our outreach through follow-up activities such as house parties where the community dialog will continue. By continued contact we can build, a committed constituency willing to hold elected officials and other decision makers accountable for their actions.

Ever since its pioneering newspaper ad, "Would you flood the Sistine Chapel so the tourists can get nearer the ceiling?" the Sierra Club has demonstrated its commitment to hold our elected officials accountable for their behavior. That ad stopped the dams in the Grand Canyon. And time and time again we have demonstrated that the American people do care, and will act, and will hold politicians accountable -- if we carefully and systematically explain to them what their leaders are doing. The Sistine Chapel ad worked because it explained what few Americans knew -- that Congress was getting ready to dam the Grand Canyon. Our yard sign Earth Day campaign, our klatches, wetlands walks and Rotary speeches also will work. Because Americans do not yet understand that this Administration would actually put their community at risk from mercury, or reduce spending on preventing fires, or shift the burden of cleaning up toxic wastes from those who dumped it to the taxpayers.

We need to demonstrate, over and over again, that it is not only members of Congress and votes on legislation that will be the focus, but also public concern. We need to make currently invisible regulatory processes visible, low intensity controversies hot, and back-room deals public.

Because of your support and dedication, the Sierra Club is the one national conservation organization with all of the necessary campaign tools available to bring to this effort. We have state and national lobbyists, a staff presence in almost every state, a well developed capacity to hold politicians accountable, and volunteer leaders in every congressional district and every major media market. We also have a legal program, local/state/national publications, email alert capacity, a canvass program, an outings program, a books program, etc. There is no other organization with this much capacity. Our challenge is to harness and direct that capacity in a challenging and exciting new direction, to train our volunteers and staff to operate in this new way, and to accelerate the already impressive pace of personal growth and institutional vision that has kept the Sierra Club vigorous and effective for 110 years.

We will give the very highest priority to work that raises our sights, builds environmental community and holds our leaders accountable. We want every part of the Club to focus its energy on this effort. And we believe that the Sierra Club is uniquely equipped, and hence uniquely responsible, for stopping the environmental counter-revolution being led by the Bush Administration.

With this challenge ahead of us, I personally want to thank you for your commitment and dedication to the Sierra Club. Your generosity has kept us going through good and bad times, and we are very grateful.

I look forward to your continued support and involvement and in reporting our progress throughout this difficult time.

Sincerely,
Bruce Hamilton
Conservation Director, Sierra Club

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P.O. Box 59156
Boulder, CO 80322-9156