Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumHow the Sierra Club Took Millions From the Natural Gas Industry—and Why They Stopped
Mainstream environmental groups have struggled to find the right line on shale natural gas and the hydraulic fracturing or fracking process. Gas has a much smaller carbon footprint than coalaccording to most scientistsand produces far fewer air pollutants. That was enough for many major green groups to give support to gas as a bridge fuel to a cleaner energy futurethe next best domestic alternative to coal as an electricity source while alternatives like wind and solar scaled up. But for grassroots members of those groupsespecially in parts of the country where fracking was already underwaythe risk of local pollution wasnt worth the national and global climate benefits of greater gas consumption, especially as media and scientific attention on the potential threats to water supplies grew. It was a major challenge for environmental leaders: how to balance local concerns about traditional pollution with planet-sized worries over climate change, and how to work with corporate America without being seen as selling out.
Now the biggest and oldest environmental group in the U.S. finds itself caught on the horns of that dilemma. TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energyone of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in frackingto help fund the Clubs Beyond Coal campaign. Though the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donationsthe news raises concerns about influence industry may have had on the Sierra Clubs independence and its support of natural gas in the past. Its also sure to anger ordinary members whove been uneasy about the Clubs relationship with corporations. The chapter groups and volunteers depend on the Club to have their back as they fight pollution from any industry, and we need to be unrestrained in our advocacy, Michael Brune, the Sierra Clubs executive director since 2010, told me. The first rule of advocacy of is that you shouldnt take money from industries and companies youre trying to change.
The news of the gas industry donationwhich had been kept anonymous until now, as many of Clubs gifts from individuals and corporations areis particularly worrisome for the Sierra Club because its former executive director Carl Pope had been vocal in supporting natural gas as an alternative to coal. Popea lifelong Sierra Club staffer who served as executive director and then chairman before stepping down late last yearaccompanied Chesapeakes McClendon in 2009 on trips promoting the benefits of natural gas over coal, even as millions of dollars of McClendons money was flowing to Sierra Club anonymously. (Pope didnt respond to email requests for comment.) In early 2008 Pope told the industry publication Oil & Gas Investor:
Use renewables as much as we can. Natural gas is the next-cleanest fuel, then we have oil and then we have coal Were trying to make sure that we innovatively and creatively use whatever fuel we burn (and) that we rely primarily on the fuels that are the cleanest And, among the fossil fuels, natural gas is at the top.
Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2012/02/02/exclusive-how-the-sierra-club-took-millions-from-the-natural-gas-industry-and-why-they-stopped/#ixzz1lM2jhDrt
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)It seems they usually become corrupted either by those inside or those outside - or by an eager cooperation of the two. It's one big reason why I can't support large activist organizations.
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)Nonprofits are only allowed to get that big when they're no longer considered dangerous.
wtmusic
(39,166 posts)limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)pscot
(21,024 posts)calls the tune.