I got an e-mail recently from Carl Pope, president of the Sierra Club, urging me to renew my membership. In the breathless, fearful tone of crisis so common to Sierra Club communications, he spoke of environmental problems around the world and listed the danger that the Bush administration poses to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to remaining roadless areas, and to laws like the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act.
I have been a proud Sierra Club member for 35 years, and I care deeply about the environment. I think Pope is right about these threats, and right again about the need to fight them. This time, however, I will keep my money in my pocket and get along without a current Sierra Club membership card stuck on my refrigerator by a magnet.
Why? The Sierra Club has gotten too big and has lost touch with individual members. Perhaps those huge membership numbers give it more clout in Washington, but I don’t like being just a number, not a person, and the club treats me like a number. That problem has been developing for years, but it makes me feel insignificant. The estrangement of a long-time member like me offers a lesson for the club about the need to nurture and to thank its members better, in order to hold on to them. Instead it relies primarily on breathless alarms, repeated over and over.
Another reason is that the Sierra Club takes a position on every issue that has any connection to the environment, anywhere on the planet. Yes, this is Spaceship Earth, but the club is trying to be all things to all people who care about environmental issues. Its power on any one problem is thereby diminished: Fighting every issue dilutes its energy and resources. Another result is that these positions tend to bump into one another. The Sierra Club is unalterably opposed to nuclear power, for example, but it seems not to recognize that wind and solar power cannot give the Chinese and the Indians the life styles we have taught them to want, so the problem of carbon dioxide and global climate change are made worse. I think the club should cut back on the number of concerns it addresses so it can act more effectively on some of them.
Then there is the Glen Canyon Dam. Not long before his death, David Brower, a founder of modern environmentalism, made a direct appeal, and the board of directors voted unanimously to make decommissioning the dam an official club policy – but that was 20 years ago, and Lake Powell continues to glitter like a blue dagger in the heart of the desert. A committee was appointed a few years ago, but it was designed for inaction and nothing useful has been done. Why? Because the Utah and Arizona chapters hold the national organization in chains on this issue. There is something wrong with the club’s governing structure.
The way to fix these problems is to get back to basics: Thank the members, listen to the members, and focus on the mission while treating the members as something other than cash cows. How to thank me and treat me like a person? The club’s database includes the year a member joined, so they could take special, individual notice when a member’s years of contribution reach a number that ends in zero or five. How to listen to me? Spend a few dollars less on multiple donation appeals and hire people to respond to e-mails from members. How to focus on the mission? That is probably the most important thing, and it requires being less interested in deforestation in Malaysia while being more focused on drilling on the Roan Plateau in Colorado. If Sierra Club lobbyists did not worry about international issues which Congress can do nothing about, then perhaps they could be more effective on domestic issues.
I still love the Sierra Club, but after a 35-year marriage, I want a divorce. Today, Carl e-mailed a friend to say that the grizzly is being delisted as an endangered species, but he did not suggest this was an occasion to write Congress about the value of the Endangered Species Act. He thought it was a reason to send more money.
F.R. Pamp is a lawyer, adjunct professor of environmental law and a consultant. He was a Colorado Voices columnist in 2006.
