Environmental education

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Environmental education (EE) refers to organized efforts to teach how natural environments function, and particularly, how human beings can manage behavior and ecosystems to live sustainably. It is a multi-disciplinary field integrating disciplines such as biology, chemistry, physics, ecology, earth science, atmospheric science, mathematics, and geography. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) states that EE is vital in imparting an inherent respect for nature amongst society and in enhancing public environmental awareness. UNESCO emphasises the role of EE in safeguarding future global developments of societal quality of life (QOL), through the protection of the environment, eradication of poverty, minimization of inequalities and insurance of sustainable development (UNESCO, 2014a). The term often implies education within the school system, from primary to post-secondary. However, it sometimes includes all efforts to educate the public and other audiences, including print materials, websites, media campaigns, etc.. There are also ways that environmental education is taught outside the traditional classroom. Aquariums, zoos, parks, and nature centers all have ways of teaching the public about the environment.

UNESCO and environmental awareness and education

UNESCO’s involvement in environmental awareness and education goes back to the very beginnings of the Organization, with the creation in 1948 of the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature, now the World Conservation Union), the first major NGO mandated to help preserve the natural environment. UNESCO was also closely involved in convening the UN International Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden in 1972, which led to the setting up of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Subsequently, for two decades, UNESCO and UNEP led the International Environmental Education Programme (1975-1995), which set out a vision for, and gave practical guidance on how to mobilize education for environmental awareness. In 1976, UNESCO launched an environmental education newsletter ‘Connect’ as the official organ of the UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Education Programme (IEEP). It served as a clearinghouse to exchange information on Environmental Education (EE) in general and to promote the aims and activities of the IEEP in particular, as well as being a network for institutions and individuals interested and active in environment education until 2007.

The long-standing cooperation between UNESCO and UNEP on environmental education (and later ESD) also led to the co-organization of four major international conferences on environmental education since 1977: the First Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education in Tbilisi, Georgia (October 1977); the Conference “International Strategy for Action in the Field of Environmental Education and Training for the 1990s” in Moscow, Russian Federation (August 1987); the third International Conference “Environment and Society: Education and Public Awareness for Sustainability” at Thessaloniki, Greece (December 1997); and the Fourth International Conference on Environmental Education towards a Sustainable Future in Ahmedabad, India (November 2007). These meetings highlighted the pivotal role education plays in sustainable development. It was at the Tbilisi conference in 1977 that the essential role of ‘education in environmental matters’ (as stated in the recommendations of the 1972 Stockholm Conference) was fully explored. Organized by UNESCO in cooperation with UNEP, this was the world's first intergovernmental conference on environmental education. In the subsequent Tbilisi Declaration, environment was interpreted in its ‘totality—natural and built, technological and social (economic, political, cultural-historical, ethical, aesthetic)’ (UNESCOUNEP, 1977, point 3). The goals formulated for environmental education went far beyond ecology in the curriculum and included development of a ‘clear awareness of, and concern about, economic, social, political, and ecological interdependence in urban and rural areas’ (ibid, point 2) which became one of the major bases of ESD.

Focus

Environmental education focuses on:

1. Engaging with citizens of all demographics to;
2. Think critically, ethically, and creatively when evaluating environmental issues;
3. Make educated judgments about those environmental issues;
4. Develop skills and a commitment to act independently and collectively to sustain and enhance the environment; and,
5. To enhance their appreciation of the environment; resulting in positive environmental behavioural change (Bamberg & Moeser, 2007; Wals et al., 2014).

Attributes

There are a few central qualities involved in environmental education that are useful contributions to the individual.

Environmental education:

1. Enhances real-world problem solving.
2. Strengthens physical activity and diet quality.
3. Improves communication/leadership when working in groups.

Careers

There are various different career paths one could delve into within environmental education. Many of these careers require discovering and planning how to resolve environmental issues occurring in today's world. The location of someone with these careers has an impact on the clear responsibilities each must obtain depending on what environmental issue is most prevalent in the area. A general outlook of some careers in this field are:

• Federal Government Park Ranger- Responsible for protecting the national parks, historical sites, and national seashores across the United States including the wildlife and ecosystems within them. There are many qualifications in order for one to become a park ranger and some include: obtaining a bachelor's degree and a passing grade in the PEB. Some focuses within this field include: enforcing park rules, giving tours to groups for educational purposes, and protecting parks from forest fires.
• Outdoor Education Teacher- Teach students by using outdoor field and classroom work. Some invite guest speakers who are experts in their field to help teach how the basic principles of science are implemented in the real world. Some requirements for this career include becoming CPR certified and having a bachelor's degree in either environmental science or a field related to it. It can be a problematic field as there is no concurrence on the central concepts that are taught as well as teachers do not agree on what constitutes an important environmental issue.
• Environmental Scientist- Use of field work to research contamination in nature when writing plans in creating projects for environmental research. Topics such as air pollution, water quality, as well as wildlife and how humans affect it are researched. Some requirements for this career are a bachelor's degree with a double major in environmental science and either biology, physics or chemistry.
• Environmental Engineer- Involves the combination of biology/chemistry with engineering to generate ways to ensure the health of the planet [DJS -- "health of the planet" is rather vague]. Scientific research is analyzed and projects are designed as a result of that research in order to come up with solutions to issues of the environment like air pollution. A bachelor's degree in civil engineering or general engineering is required as well as some experience in this field.

Related fields

Environmental education has crossover with multiple other disciplines. These fields of education complement environmental education yet have unique philosophies.

• Citizen Science (CS) aims to address both scientific and environmental outcomes through enlisting the public in the collection of data, through relatively simple protocols, generally from local habitats over long periods of time (Bonney et al., 2009).
• Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) aims to reorient education to empower individuals to make informed decisions for environmental integrity, social justice, and economic viability for both present and future generations, whilst respecting cultural diversities (UNESCO, 2014b).
• Climate Change Education (CCE) aims in enhancing the public's understanding of climate change, its consequences, and its problems, and to prepare current and future generations to limit the magnitude of climate change and to respond to its challenges (Beatty, 2012). Specifically, CCE needs to help learners develop knowledge, skills and values and action to engage and learn about the causes, impact and management of climate change (Chang, 2014).
• Science Education (SE) focuses primarily on teaching knowledge and skills, to develop innovative thought in society (Wals et al., 2014).
• Outdoor Education (OE) relies on the assumption that learning experiences outdoors in ‘nature’ foster an appreciation of nature, resulting in pro-environmental awareness and action (Clarke & Mcphie,2014). Outdoor education means learning "in" and "for" the outdoors.
• Experiential education (ExE) is a process through which a learner constructs knowledge, skill, and value from direct experiences" (AEE, 2002, p. 5) Experiential education can be viewed as both a process and method to deliver the ideas and skills associated with environmental education (ERIC, 2002).
• Garden-based learning (GBL) is an instructional strategy that utilizes the garden as a teaching tool. It encompasses programs, activities and projects in which the garden is the foundation for integrated learning, in and across disciplines, through active, engaging, real-world experiences that have personal meaning for children, youth, adults and communities in an informal outside learning setting.
• Inquiry-based Science (IBS) is an active open style of teaching in which students follow scientific steps in a similar manner as scientists to study some problem (Walker 2015). Often used in biological and environmental settings.

While each of these educational fields has their own objectives, there are points where they overlap with the intentions and philosophy of environmental education.

History

The roots of environmental education can be traced back as early as the 18th century when Jean-Jacques Rousseau stressed the importance of an education that focuses on the environment in Emile: or, On Education. Several decades later, Louis Agassiz, a Swiss-born naturalist, echoed Rousseau's philosophy as he encouraged students to “Study nature, not books.” These two influential scholars helped lay the foundation for a concrete environmental education program, known as nature study, which took place in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The nature study movement used fables and moral lessons to help students develop an appreciation of nature and embrace the natural world. Anna Botsford Comstock, the head of the Department of Nature Study at Cornell University, was a prominent figure in the nature study movement. She wrote the Handbook for Nature Study in 1911 which used nature to educate children on cultural values. Comstock and the other leaders of the movement, such as Liberty Hyde Bailey, helped Nature Study garner tremendous amounts of support from community leaders, teachers, and scientists to change the science curriculum for children across the United States. 

A new type of environmental education, Conservation Education, emerged as a result of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl during the 1920s and 1930s. Conservation Education dealt with the natural world in a drastically different way from Nature Study because it focused on rigorous scientific training rather than natural history. Conservation Education was a major scientific management and planning tool that helped solve social, economic, and environmental problems during this time period.

The modern environmental education movement, which gained significant momentum in the late 1960s and early 1970s, stems from Nature Study and Conservation Education. During this time period, many events – such as Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War – placed Americans at odds with one another and the U.S. government. However, as more people began to fear the fallout from radiation, the chemical pesticides mentioned in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and the significant amounts of air pollution and waste, the public's concern for their health and the health of their natural environment led to a unifying phenomenon known as environmentalism. Environmental education was born of the realization that solving complex local and global problems cannot be accomplished by politicians and experts alone, but requires "the support and active participation of an informed public in their various roles as consumers, voters, employers, and business and community leaders." 

One of the first articles about environmental education as a new movement appeared in the Phi Delta Kappan in 1969, authored by James A. Swan. A definition of "Environmental Education" first appeared in The Journal of Environmental Education in 1969, written by William B. Stapp. Stapp later went on to become the first Director of Environmental Education for UNESCO, and then the Global Rivers International Network.

Ultimately, the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 – a national teach-in about environmental problems – paved the way for the modern environmental education movement. Later that same year, President Nixon passed the National Environmental Education Act, which was intended to incorporate environmental education into K-12 schools. Then, in 1971, the National Association for Environmental Education (now known as the North American Association for Environmental Education) was created to improve environmental literacy by providing resources to teachers and promoting environmental education programs.

Internationally, environmental education gained recognition when the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972, declared environmental education must be used as a tool to address global environmental problems. The United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) created three major declarations that have guided the course of environmental education.

In 2002, the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014 (UNDESD) was formed as a way to reconsider, excite, and change approaches to acting positively on global challenges. The Commission on Education and Communication (CEC) helped support the work of the UNDESD by composing a backbone structure for education for sustainability, which contained five major components. The components are "Imagining a better future", "Critical thinking and reflection", "Participation in decision making" and "Partnerships, and Systemic thinking".

On June 9–14, 2013, the seventh World Environmental Education Congress was held in Marrakesh, Morocco. The overall theme of the conference was "Environmental education and issues in cities and rural areas: seeking greater harmony” [DJS -- again, "harmony (with nature) is a vague concept], and incorporated 11 different areas of concern. The World Environmental Education Congress had 2,400 members, representing over 150 countries. This meeting was the first time ever that it had been held in an Arab country, and was put together by two different organizations, the Mohamed VI Foundation for Environmental Protection and the World Environmental Education Congress Permanent Secretariat in Italy. Topics addressed at the congress include stressing the importance of environmental education and its role to empower, establishing partnerships to promote environmental education, how to mainstream environmental and sustainability, and even how to make universities "greener".

Stockholm Declaration

June 5–16, 1972 - The Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. The document was made up of 7 proclamations and 26 principles "to inspire and guide the peoples of the world in the preservation and enhancement of the human environment."

Belgrade Charter

October 13–22, 1975 - The Belgrade Charter was the outcome of the International Workshop on Environmental Education held in Belgrade, Jugoslavia (now Serbia). The Belgrade Charter was built upon the Stockholm Declaration and adds goals, objectives, and guiding principles of environmental education programs. It defines an audience for environmental education, which includes the general public.

Tbilisi Declaration

October 14–26, 1977 - The Tbilisi Declaration "noted the unanimous accord in the important role of environmental education in the preservation and improvement of the world's environment, as well as in the sound and balanced development of the world's communities." The Tbilisi Declaration updated and clarified The Stockholm Declaration and The Belgrade Charter by including new goals, objectives, characteristics, and guiding principles of environmental education. 

Later that decade, in 1977, the Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education in Tbilisi, Georgia emphasized the role of Environmental Education in preserving and improving the global environment and sought to provide the framework and guidelines for environmental education. The Conference laid out the role, objectives, and characteristics of environmental education, and provided several goals and principles for environmental education.

About

Environmental education has been considered an additional or elective subject in much of traditional K-12 curriculum. At the elementary school level, environmental education can take the form of science enrichment curriculum, natural history field trips, community service projects, and participation in outdoor science schools. EE policies assist schools and organizations in developing and improving environmental education programs that provide citizens with an in-depth understanding of the environment. School related EE policies focus on three main components: curricula, green facilities, and training. 

Schools can integrate environmental education into their curricula with sufficient funding from EE policies. This approach – known as using the “environment as an integrating context” for learning – uses the local environment as a framework for teaching state and district education standards. In addition to funding environmental curricula in the classroom, environmental education policies allot the financial resources for hands-on, outdoor learning. These activities and lessons help address and mitigate "nature deficit disorder", as well as encourage healthier lifestyles. 

Green schools, or green facility promotion, are another main component of environmental education policies. Greening school facilities cost, on average, a little less than 2 percent more than creating a traditional school, but payback from these energy efficient buildings occur within only a few years. Environmental education policies help reduce the relatively small burden of the initial start-up costs for green schools. Green school policies also provide grants for modernization, renovation, or repair of older school facilities. Additionally, healthy food options are also a central aspect of green schools. These policies specifically focus on bringing freshly prepared food, made from high-quality, locally grown ingredients into schools. 

In secondary school, environmental curriculum can be a focused subject within the sciences or is a part of student interest groups or clubs. At the undergraduate and graduate level, it can be considered its own field within education, environmental studies, environmental science and policy, ecology, or human/cultural ecology programs. 

Environmental education is not restricted to in-class lesson plans. Children can learn about the environment in many ways. Experiential lessons in the school yard, field trips to national parks, after-school green clubs, and school-wide sustainability projects help make the environment an easily accessible topic. Furthermore, celebration of Earth Day or participation in EE week (run through the National Environmental Education Foundation) can help further environmental education. Effective programs promote a holistic approach and lead by example, using sustainable practices in the school to encourage students and parents to bring environmental education into their home.

The final aspect of environmental education policies involves training individuals to thrive in a sustainable society. In addition to building a strong relationship with nature, citizens must have the skills and knowledge to succeed in a 21st-century workforce. Thus, environmental education policies fund both teacher training and worker training initiatives. Teachers train to effectively teach and incorporate environmental studies. On the other hand, the current workforce must be trained or re-trained so they can adapt to the new green economy. Environmental education policies that fund training programs are critical to educating citizens to prosper in a sustainable society.

In the United States

Following the 1970s, non-governmental organizations that focused on environmental education continued to form and grow, the number of teachers implementing environmental education in their classrooms increased, and the movement gained stronger political backing. A critical move forward came when the United States Congress passed the National Environmental Education Act of 1990, which placed the Office of Environmental Education in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and allowed the EPA to create environmental education initiatives at the federal level.

The EPA has their own definition of what environmental education should be and it is as follows. "Environmental education is a process that allows individuals to explore environmental issues, engage in problem solving, and take action to improve the environment. As a result, individuals develop a deeper understanding of environmental issues and have the skills to make informed and responsible decisions." The EPA also has a list of the components of what should be gained from EE.

• Awareness and sensitivity to the environment and environmental challenges
• Knowledge and understanding of the environment and environmental challenges
• Attitudes of concern for the environment and motivation to improve or maintain environmental quality
• Skills to identify and help resolve environmental challenges
• Participation in activities that lead to the resolution of environmental challenges

Through the EPA Environmental Education (EE) Grant Program, public schools, communities agencies, and NGO's are eligible to receive federal funding for local educational projects that reflect the EPA's priorities: air quality, water quality, chemical safety, and public participation among the communities. 

In the United States some of the antecedents of environmental education were the Nature Study movement, conservation education and school camping. Nature studies integrated academic approach with outdoor exploration (Roth, 1978). Conservation education raised awareness about the misuse of natural resources and the need for their preservation. George Perkins Marsh discoursed on humanity's integral part of the natural world. Governmental agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and the EPA supported conservation efforts. Conservation ideals still guide environmental education today. School camping was exposure to the environment and use of resources outside of the classroom for educational purposes. The legacies of these antecedents are still present in the evolving arena of environmental education.

Obstacles

A study of Ontario teachers explored obstacles to environmental education. Through an internet-based survey questionnaire, 300 K-12 teachers from Ontario, Canada responded. Based on the results of the survey, the most significant challenges identified by the sample of Ontario teachers include over-crowded curriculum, lack of resources, low priority of environmental education in schools, limited access to the outdoors, student apathy to environmental issues, and the controversial nature of sociopolitical action.

An influential article by Stevenson (2007) outlines conflicting goals of environmental education and traditional schooling. According to Stevenson (2007), the recent critical and action orientation of environmental education creates a challenging task for schools. Contemporary environmental education strives to transform values that underlie decision making from ones that aid environmental (and human) degradation to those that support a sustainable planet. This contrasts with the traditional purpose of schools of conserving the existing social order by reproducing the norms and values that currently dominate environmental decision making. Confronting this contradiction is a major challenge to environmental education teachers. 

Additionally, the dominant narrative that all environmental educators have an agenda can present difficulties in expanding reach. It is said that an environmental educator is one "who uses information and educational processes to help people analyze the merits of the many and varied points of view usually present on a given environmental issues." Greater efforts must be taken to train educators on the importance of staying within the profession's substantive structure, and in informing the general public on the profession's intention to empower fully informed decision making.

Another obstacle facing the implementation of environmental education lies the quality of education itself. Charles Sayan, the executive director of the Ocean Conservation Society, represents alternate views and critiques on environmental education in his new book The Failure of Environmental Education (And How We Can Fix It). In a Yale Environment 360 interview, Sayan discusses his book and outlines several flaws within environmental education, particularly its failed efforts to “reach its potential in fighting climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation”. He believes that environmental education is not “keeping pace with environmental degradation” and encourages structural reform by increasing student engagement as well as improving relevance of information. These same critiques are discussed in Stewart Hudson's BioScience paper, “Challenges for Environmental Education: Issues and Ideas for the 21st Century”.

In 2017, a study found that high school science textbooks and government resources on climate change from USA, EU, Canada and Australia did focus their recommendations for CO2 emission reductions on lower-impact actions instead of promoting the most effective emission-reduction strategies.

Movement

A movement that has progressed since the relatively recent founding of environmental education in industrial societies has transported the participant from nature appreciation and awareness to education for an ecologically sustainable future. This trend may be viewed as a microcosm of how many environmental education programs seek to first engage participants through developing a sense of nature appreciation which then translates into actions that affect conservation and sustainability.

Programs range from New York to California, including Life Lab at University of California, Santa Cruz, as well as Cornell University in

Environmental Education in the Global South

Environmentalism has also began to make waves in the development of the global South, as the “First World” takes on the responsibility of helping developing countries to combat environmental issues produced and prolonged by conditions of poverty. Unique to environmental education in the Global South is its particular focus on sustainable development. This goal has been a part of international agenda since the 1900s, with the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO) and the Earth Council Alliance (ECA) at the forefront of pursuing sustainable development in the south.

The 1977 Tbilisi intergovernmental conference played a key role in the development of outcome of the conference was the Tbilisi Declaration, a unanimous accord which “constitutes the framework, principles, and guidelines for environmental education at all levels—local, national, regional, and international—and for all age groups both inside and outside the formal school system” recommended as a criteria for implementing environmental education. The Declaration was established with the intention of increasing environmental stewardship, awareness and behavior, which paved the way for the rise of modern environmental education.

After the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, over 80 National Councils for Sustainable Development in developing countries were created between 1992-1998 to aid in compliance of international sustainability goals and encourage “creative solutions”. 

In 1993, the Earth Council Alliance released the Treaty on environmental education for sustainable societies and global responsibility, sparking discourse on environmental education. The Treaty, in 65 statements, outlines the role of environmental education in facilitating sustainable development through all aspects of democratized participation and provides a methodology for the Treaty's signatories. It has been instrumentally utilized in expanding the field towards the global South, wherein the discourse of “environmental education for sustainable development” recognizes a need to include human population dynamics in EE and emphasizes “aspects related to contemporary economic realities and by placing greater emphasis on concerns for planetary solidarity”. Even as a necessary tool for the proliferation of environmental stewardship, environmental education implemented in the South varies and addresses environmental issues in relation to their impact different communities and specific community needs. Whereas in the developed global North where the environmentalist sentiments are centered around conservation without taking into consideration “the needs of people living within communities”, the global South must push forth a conservation agenda that parallels with social, economic, and political development. The role of environmental education in the South is centered around potential economic growth in development projects, as explicitly stated by the UNESCO, to apply environmental education for sustainable development through a "creative and effective use of human potential and all forms of capital to ensure rapid and more equitable economic growth, with minimal impact on the environment". 

Moving into the 21st century, EE was furthered by United Nations as a part of the 2000 Millennium Development Goals to improve the planet by 2015. The MDGs included global efforts to end extreme poverty, work towards gender equality, access to education, and sustainable development to name a few. Although the MDGs produced great outcomes, its objectives were not met, and MDGs were soon were soon replaced by Sustainable Development Goals. A “universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity”, SDGs became the new face of global priorities. These new goals incorporated objectives from MDGs yet incorporated a necessary environmental framework to “address key systemic barriers to sustainable development such as inequality, unsustainable consumption patterns, weak institutional capacity and environmental degradation that the MDGs neglected”.

Trends

One of the current trends within environmental education seeks to move from an approach of ideology and activism to one that allows students to make informed decisions and take action based on experience as well as data. Within this process, environmental curricula have progressively been integrated into governmental education standards. Some environmental educators find this movement distressing and move away from the original political and activist approach to environmental education while others find this approach more valid and accessible. Regardless, many educational institutions are encouraging students to take an active role in environmental education and stewardship at their institutions. They know that "to be successful, greening initiatives require both grassroots support from the student body and top down support from high-level campus administrators."

Environmental Education is also being funded through the Every Student Succeeds Act. Under Title IV, Part A of ESSA, it states that Environmental Education is an enrichment activity for students which is eligible for funding under a new grants program. The program gives a “well-rounded” education as well as access to student health and safety programs. Under Title Iv, Part B, it states that environmental literacy programs are also eligible for funding through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program. The funds that are available for both parts are block granted to the states using the Title I formula. In the FY2018 budget, Titles IVA and IVB were both given $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion. For title IVA, this is a $700 million raise from the 2017 budget which makes the 2018-2019 school year the most availability to environmental education ever.

Renewable Energy Education

Renewable energy education (REE) is a relatively new field of education. The overall objectives of REE pertain to giving a working knowledge and understanding of concepts, facts, principles and technologies for gathering the renewable sources of energy. Based on these objectives, the role of a renewable energy education programs should be informative, investigative, educative, and imaginative. REE should be taught with the world's population in mind as the world will run out of non-renewable resources within the next century. Renewable energy education is also being brought to political leaders as a means of getting more sustainable development to occur around the globe. This is happening in the hopes that it will uproot millions of people out of poverty and into a better quality of life in many countries .Renewable energy education is also about bringing awareness of climate change to the general public as well as an understanding of the current renewable energy technologies. An understanding of the new technologies is imperative to get them stream-lined and accepted by the vast majority of the public.

Sierra Club

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Motto	Explore, enjoy and protect the planet.
Formation	May 28, 1892
Founder	John Muir
Type	501(c)(4) nonprofit advocacy organization
Headquarters	Oakland, California, U.S.
Membership	3 million (self-reported)
Exec. Dir.	Michael Brune
President	Loren Blackford
Affiliations	Sierra Club Foundation, Sierra Student Coalition, Sierra Club Books, Sierra Club Canada
Budget	$97,891,373 (2013)
Staff	600
Website	www.sierraclub.org

The Sierra Club is an environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who became its first president. The Sierra Club primarily operates in the United States; an affiliated organization, Sierra Club Canada, operates in Canada and deals exclusively with Canadian issues.

Traditionally associated with the progressive movement, the club was one of the first large-scale environmental preservation organizations in the world, and currently engages in lobbying politicians to promote environmentalist policies. Recent focuses of the club include promoting sustainable energy, mitigating global warming, and opposing the use of coal. The club is known for its political endorsements, which are often sought after by candidates in local elections; it generally supports liberal and progressive candidates in elections.

The Sierra Club is organized on both a national and local level. The club is divided into large chapters representing large geographic areas, some of which have tens of thousands of members. These chapters are divided into regional groups, and special interest sections, committees, and task forces. While much activity is coordinated at a local level, the Club is a unified organization; decisions made at the national level take precedence.

In addition to political advocacy, the Sierra Club organizes outdoor recreation activities, and has historically been a notable organization for mountaineering and rock climbing in the United States. Members of the Sierra Club pioneered the Yosemite Decimal System of climbing, and were responsible for a substantial amount of the early development of climbing. Much of this activity occurred in the group's namesake Sierra Nevada. The Sierra Club does not set standards for or regulate alpinism, but it organizes wilderness courses, hikes, and occasional alpine expeditions for members. In California, the club, through its outdoor recreation groups, is usually considered the state's analogue to other state mountaineering clubs such as Mazamas or the Colorado Mountain Club.

Overview

The Sierra Club's stated mission is "To explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth; To practice and promote the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources; To educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives."

The Sierra Club is governed by a 15-member Board of Directors. Each year, five directors are elected to three-year terms, and all club members are eligible to vote. A president is elected annually by the Board from among its members. The Executive Director runs the day-to-day operations of the group. Michael Brune, formerly of Rainforest Action Network, has served as the organization's executive director since 2010. Brune succeeded Carl Pope. Pope stepped down amid discontent that the group had strayed from its core principles.

Sierra Club members belong to statewide chapters and local groups. National and local special-interest sections, committees, and task forces address particular issues. The national Sierra Club sets the organization's policy agenda and overarching rules.

The club is known for engaging in two main activities: promoting and guiding outdoor recreational activities, which is done throughout the United States but primarily in California (especially Southern California), and political activism to promote environmental causes. Richard M. Skinner of the Brookings Institution describes the Sierra Club as one of the United States' "leading environmental organizations". The Sierra Club makes endorsements of individual candidates for elected office, which has substantial weight given the club's reputation and large membership.

History

Petition and map from John Muir and other founders of Sierra Club

Founding

Journalist Robert Underwood Johnson had worked with John Muir on the successful campaign to create a large Yosemite National Park surrounding the much smaller state park which had been created in 1864. This campaign succeeded in 1890. As early as 1889, Johnson had encouraged Muir to form an "association" to help protect the Sierra Nevada, and preliminary meetings were held to plan the group. Others involved in the early planning included artist William Keith, Willis Linn Jepson, Willard Drake Johnson, Joseph LeConte and David Starr Jordan.

In May 1892, a group of professors from the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University helped Muir and attorney Warren Olney launch the new organization modeled after the eastern Appalachian Mountain Club. The Sierra Club's charter members elected Muir president, an office he held until his death in 1914.

The Club's first goals included establishing Glacier and Mount Rainier national parks, convincing the California legislature to give Yosemite Valley to the U.S. federal government, and preserving California's coastal redwoods.

Muir escorted President Theodore Roosevelt through Yosemite in 1903, and two years later the California legislature ceded Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove to the federal government. The Sierra Club won its first lobbying victory with the creation of the country's second national park, after Yellowstone in 1872.

Hetch Hetchy controversy

Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir in Yosemite National Park, c. 1906

 

In the first decade of the 1900s, the Sierra Club became embroiled in the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir controversy that divided preservationists from "resource management" conservationists. In the late 19th century, the city of San Francisco was rapidly outgrowing its limited water supply, which depended on intermittent local springs and streams. In 1890, San Francisco mayor James D. Phelan proposed to build a dam and aqueduct on the Tuolumne River, one of the largest southern Sierra rivers, as a way to increase and stabilize the city's water supply.

Gifford Pinchot, a progressive supporter of public utilities and head of the US Forest Service, which then had jurisdiction over the national parks, supported the creation of the Hetch Hetchy dam. Muir appealed to his friend U.S. President Roosevelt, who would not commit himself against the dam, given its popularity with the people of San Francisco (a referendum in 1908 confirmed a seven-to-one majority in favor of the dam and municipal water). Muir and attorney William Edward Colby began a national campaign against the dam, attracting the support of many eastern conservationists. With the 1912 election of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who carried San Francisco, supporters of the dam had a friend in the White House. 

The bill to dam Hetch Hetchy passed Congress in 1913, and so the Sierra Club lost its first major battle. In retaliation, the Club supported creation of the National Park Service in 1916, to remove the parks from Forest Service oversight. Stephen Mather, a Club member from Chicago and an opponent of the Hetch Hetchy dam, became the first National Park Service director.

1920s–40s

During the 1920s and 1930s, the Sierra Club functioned as a social and recreational society, conducting outings, maintaining trails and building huts and lodges in the Sierras. Preservation campaigns included a several-year effort to enlarge Sequoia National Park (achieved in 1926) and over three decades of work to protect and then preserve Kings Canyon National Park (established in 1940). Historian Stephen Fox notes, "In the 1930s most of the three thousand members were middle-aged Republicans."

The New Deal brought many conservationists to the Democratic Party, and many Democrats entered the ranks of conservationists. Leading the generation of Young Turks who revitalized the Sierra Club after World War II were attorneys Richard Leonard and Bestor Robinson, nature photographer Ansel Adams, and David Brower. 

Adams sponsored Brower for membership in the Club, and he was appointed to the editorial board of the Sierra Club Bulletin. After World War II Brower returned to his job with the University of California Press, and began editing the Sierra Club Bulletin in 1946.

National reach

In 1950, the Sierra Club had some 7,000 members, mostly on the West Coast. That year the Atlantic chapter became the first formed outside California. An active volunteer board of directors ran the organization, assisted by a small clerical staff. Brower was appointed the first executive director in 1952, and the Club began to catch up with major conservation organizations such as the National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, The Wilderness Society, and Izaak Walton League, which had long had professional staff.

The Sierra Club secured its national reputation in the battle against the Echo Park Dam in Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, which had been announced by the Bureau of Reclamation in 1950. Brower led the fight, marshaling support from other conservation groups. Brower's background in publishing proved decisive; with the help of publisher Alfred Knopf, This Is Dinosaur was rushed into press. Invoking the specter of Hetch Hetchy, conservationists effectively lobbied Congress, which deleted the Echo Park dam from the Colorado River project as approved in 1955. Recognition of the Sierra Club's role in the Echo Park dam victory boosted membership from 10,000 in 1956 to 15,000 in 1960.

The Sierra Club was now truly a national conservation organization, and preservationists took the offensive with wilderness proposals. The Club's Biennial Wilderness Conferences, launched in 1949 in concert with The Wilderness Society, became an important force in the campaign that secured passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964.

Book series

In 1960, Brower launched the Exhibit Format book series with This Is the American Earth, and in 1962 In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World, with color photographs by Eliot Porter. These coffee-table books, published by their Sierra Club Books division, introduced the Sierra Club to a wider audience. Fifty thousand copies were sold in the first four years, and by 1960 sales exceeded $10 million. Soon Brower was publishing two new titles a year in the Exhibit Format series, but not all did as well as In Wildness. Although the books were successful in introducing the public to wilderness preservation and the Sierra Club, they lost money for the organization, some $60,000 a year after 1964. Financial management became a matter of contention between Brower and his board of directors.

Grand Canyon campaign

The Sierra Club's most publicized crusade of the 1960s was the effort to stop the Bureau of Reclamation from building two dams that would flood portions of the Grand Canyon. Opposing the Bridge Canyon and Marble Canyon dam projects, full-page ads the Club placed in the New York Times and the Washington Post in 1966 exclaimed, "This time it's the Grand Canyon they want to flood," and asked, "Should we also flood the Sistine Chapel so tourists can get nearer the ceiling?" The ads generated a storm of protest to the Congress, prompting the Internal Revenue Service to announce it was suspending the Sierra Club's 501(c)(3) status pending an investigation. The board had taken the precaution of setting up the Sierra Club Foundation as a (c)(3) organization in 1960 for endowments and contributions for educational and other non-lobbying activities. Even so, contributions to the Club dropped off, aggravating its annual operating deficits. Membership, however, climbed sharply in response to the investigation into the legitimacy of the society's tax status by the IRS from 30,000 in 1965 to 57,000 in 1967 and 75,000 in 1969.

The victory over the dam projects and challenges from the IRS did not come without costs. To make up for the power that would have been produced by the dams, the Sierra Club actually advocated for coal power plants. The result of the campaign and its trade-off was, in the words of historian Andrew Needham, that "the Grand Canyon became protected, sacred space," while "the Navajo Reservation"—which housed some of the main power plants picking up the slack – "became increasingly industrial."

End of the Brower era

Despite the Club's success in blocking plans for the Grand Canyon dams and weathering the transition from 501(c)(3) to 501(c)(4) status, tension grew over finances between Brower and the board of directors. The Club's annual deficits rose from $100,000 in 1967 and 1968 to some $200,000 in 1969. Another conflict occurred over the Club's policy toward the nuclear power plant to be constructed by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) at Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo, California. Although the Club had played the leading role blocking PG&E's nuclear power plant proposed for Bodega Bay, California in the early 1960s, that case had been built around the local environmental impact and earthquake danger from the nearby San Andreas fault, not from opposition to nuclear power itself. In exchange for moving the new proposed site from the environmentally sensitive Nipomo Dunes to Diablo Canyon, the board of directors voted to support PG&E's plan for the power plant. A membership referendum in 1967 upheld the board's decision. But Brower concluded that nuclear power at any location was a mistake, and he voiced his opposition to the plant, contrary to the Club's official policy. As pro- and anti-Brower factions polarized, the annual election of new directors reflected the conflict. Brower's supporters won a majority in 1968, but in the April 1969 election the anti-Brower candidates won all five open positions. Ansel Adams and president Richard Leonard, two of his closest friends on the board, led the opposition to Brower, charging him with financial recklessness and insubordination and calling for his ouster as executive director. The board voted ten to five to accept Brower's resignation. Eventually reconciled with the Club, Brower was elected to the board of directors for a term from 1983 to 1988, and again from 1995 to 2000.

McCloskey years

Michael McCloskey, hired by Brower in 1961 as the Club's first northwest field representative, became the Club's second executive director in 1969. An administrator attentive to detail, McCloskey had set up the Club's conservation department in 1965 and guided the campaigns to save the Grand Canyon and establish Redwoods National Park and North Cascades National Park. During the 1970s, McCloskey led the Club's legislative activity—preserving Alaskan lands and eastern wilderness areas, and supporting the new environmental agenda: the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, the Clean Air Act amendments, and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, passed during the administration of President Jimmy Carter. The Sierra Club made its first presidential endorsement in 1984 in support of Walter Mondale's unsuccessful campaign to unseat Ronald Reagan. McCloskey resigned as executive director in 1985 after 16-1/2 years (the same length of time Brower had led the organization), and assumed the title of chairman, becoming the Club's senior strategist, devoting his time to conservation policy rather than budget planning and administration. After a two-year interlude with Douglas Wheeler, whose Republican credentials were disconcerting to liberal members, the Club hired Michael Fischer, the former head of the California Coastal Commission, who served as executive director from 1987 to 1992. Carl Pope, formerly the Club's legislative director, was named executive director in 1992.

Lobbying within the club

In the 1990s, club members Jim Bensman, Roger Clarke, David Dilworth, Chad Hanson and David Orr along with about 2,000 members formed the John Muir Sierrans (JMS), an internal caucus, to promote changes to club positions. They favored a zero-cut forest policy on public lands and, a few years later, decommissioning Glen Canyon Dam. JMS was successful in changing club positions on both counts.

21st century

In September 2005, the Sierra Club held its first Sierra Summit in San Francisco. Approximately 1,000 volunteers from around the country, selected by their chapters and groups, were delegates; some nondelegate members also attended. There were seminars and exhibit presentations about current environmental issues and about techniques for more effective activism. Prominent guest speakers included Al Gore; Bill Maher; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; and Arianna Huffington.

In 2008, several Sierra Club officers quit in protest after the Sierra Club agreed to promote products by Clorox, which had been named one of a "dangerous dozen" chemical companies by the Public Interest Research Group in 2004. According to Carl Pope, the Sierra Club chairman, the deal brought the Club 1.3 million US dollars over the four-year term of the contract.

Also in 2008, the Sierra Club endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President, citing "his strong record of support for clean air, wetlands protection, and clean energy."

Between 2007 and 2010, the Sierra Club accepted over 25 million US dollars in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the US and a firm heavily involved in fracking.

In November 2011, Sierra Club chairman Carl Pope stepped down amid discontent about the Clorox deal and other issues.

In January 2013, executive director Michael Brune announced  that the Sierra Club would officially participate in the first civil disobedience action in its 120-year history as part of the ongoing protest calling on the Obama administration to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, stating, "we are watching a global crisis unfold before our eyes, and to stand aside and let it happen – even though we know how to stop it – would be unconscionable." On 13 February 2013, Michael Brune was arrested along with forty-eight people, including civil rights leader Julian Bond and NASA climate scientist James Hansen.

In May 2015, the Sierra Club appointed its first black president of the board of directors, Aaron Mair.

The Sierra Club endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Outdoor programs

Mountaineering

In 1901, William Colby organized the first Sierra Club excursion to Yosemite Valley. The annual High Trips were led by mountaineers such as Francis P. Farquhar, Joseph Nisbet LeConte, Norman Clyde, Walter A. Starr, Jr., Jules Eichorn, Glen Dawson, Ansel Adams, and David R. Brower. A number of first ascents in the Sierra Nevada were made on Sierra Club outings. Sierra Club members were also early enthusiasts of rock climbing. In 1911, the first chapter was formed, Angeles, and it began conducting local excursions in the mountains surrounding Los Angeles and throughout the West. 

Many major innovations in mountaineering have come from Sierra Club members. Norman Clyde and Jules Eichorn, considered among the most famous members of the club, completed many first ascents of peaks in the Sierra Nevada. 

Glen Dawson and Royal Robbins, often on trips sponsored and organized by the Rock Climbing Section of the Angeles Chapter, opened up much of the Tahquitz Peak area to climbing, which at the time was said to contain some of the hardest routes in the world. The Yosemite Decimal System, the primary method of rating a route's difficulty used in the United States, was developed into its modern form at Tahquitz. 

Steve Roper's Fifty Classic Climbs of North America, sponsored and published by the Sierra Club, is still considered one of the definitive rock climbing guidebooks in the United States. 

Due to an increasing focus on political activity and concerns about financial liability, mountaineering activity in the Sierra Club has subsided since the 1980s. Some chapters, mostly in California, continue to maintain large mountaineering programs. 

The club currently occasionally awards the Francis P. Farquhar Mountaineering Award to outstanding member mountaineers.

Hiking and Outings

In World War II, a number of Sierra Club leaders joined the 10th Mountain Division. Among them was David R. Brower, who managed the High Trip program from 1947 to 1954, while serving as a major in the Army Reserve.

In many areas of the country, Sierra Club also organizes hiking tours. Sierra Club's website has a "hiking near me" function. Section "Sierra Club Near You" shows all the upcoming trips in nearby area.

The historic High Trips, sometimes large expeditions with more than a hundred participants and crew, have given way to smaller and more numerous excursions held across the United States and abroad. These outings form a major part of Sierra Club culture, and in some chapters, constitute the majority of member activity. Other chapters, however, may sponsor very few outdoor or recreational activities, being focused solely on political advocacy. Generally, chapters in California are much more active with regard to outdoor activities.

Sierra Club awards

Ladybug, Ready for Takeoff – Grand Prize Winner in the Sierra Club's April 2010 Trails Photo Contest

 

The Sierra Club presents a number of annual awards. These awards include the Sierra Club John Muir Award, which is the organization's top award. The John Muir Award is given to an individual with "a distinguished record of achievement in national or international conservation causes."

Other awards given by the Sierra Club include the Ansel Adams Award for Conservation Photography, which honors excellence in conservation photography; and the Francis P. Farquhar Mountaineering Award, which recognizes contributions to mountaineering.

Policy positions

Land management

Land management, access, conservation are traditionally considered the core advocacy areas of the Sierra Club. Uniquely for a progressive organization, the Sierra Club has strong grassroots organization in rural areas, with much activity focused on ensuring equitable and environmentally-friendly use of public lands. This is particularly accentuated by the fact that the club attracts many people who primarily join the club for recreation and use of public land for hiking.

Some Sierra Club members have urged the Club to be more forceful in advocating for the protection of National Forests and other federally owned public lands. For example, in 2002 the Club was criticized for joining with the Wilderness Society in agreeing to a compromise that would allow logging in the Black Hills in South Dakota.

Opposition to coal

A goal of the Sierra Club is to replace coal with other energy sources. Through its "Beyond Coal" campaign, the Sierra Club has set a goal to close half of all coal plants in the U.S. by 2017. American business magnate and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg donated $50 million to the Sierra Club's anti-coal work in 2011, and announced another $30 million gift to Sierra's Beyond Coal campaign in 2015. The Beyond Coal campaign says 187 coal plants have been closed since 2010. Other funders of the Sierra Club's anti-coal campaign include the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The CEO of Chesapeake Energy, a natural gas company, donated $26 million to the Beyond Coal campaign between 2007 and 2010.

The Sierra Club is also opposed to nuclear energy.

Opposition to dams

The Sierra Club opposes dams it considers inappropriate, including some government-built dams in national parks. In the early 20th century, the organization fought against the damming and flooding of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. Despite this lobbying, Congress authorized the construction of O'Shaughnessy Dam on the Tuolumne River. The Sierra Club continues to support removal of the dam.

The Sierra Club advocates the decommissioning of Glen Canyon Dam and the draining of Lake Powell. The Club also supports removal, breaching or decommissioning of many other dams, including four dams on the lower Snake River in eastern Washington.

Alliance with organized labor

The Sierra Club is a member of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of environmental groups and labor unions. The BlueGreen Alliance was formed in 2006 and grew out of a less-formal collaboration between the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers. In 2012, the Laborers' International Union of North America left the coalition due to the Sierra Club and other environmental groups' opposition to the Keystone Pipeline.

Population and immigration

Immigration was historically among the most divisive issues within the club. In 1996, after years of debate, the Sierra Club adopted a neutral position on immigration levels. As the club has shifted to the left over the years, this position was amended in 2013 to support "an equitable path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants".

History

Although the position of the Sierra Club has generally been favorable towards immigration, some critics of the Sierra Club have charged that the efforts of some club members to restrain immigration, are a continuation of aspects of human population control and the eugenics movement. In 1969, the Sierra Club published Paul R. Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb, in which he said that population growth was responsible for environmental decline and advocated coercive measures to reduce it. Some observers have argued that the book had a "racial dimension" in the tradition of the Eugenics movement, and that it "reiterated many of Osborn's jeremiads."

During the 1980s, some Sierra Club members, including Paul Ehrlich's wife Anne, wanted to take the Club into the contentious field of immigration to the United States. The Club's position was that overpopulation was a significant factor in the degradation of the environment. Accordingly, the Club supported stabilizing and reducing U.S. and world population. Some members argued that, as a practical matter, U.S. population could not be stabilized, let alone reduced, at the then-current levels of immigration. They urged the Club to support immigration reduction. The Club had previously addressed the issue of "mass immigration", and in 1988, the organization's Population Committee and Conservation Coordinating Committee stated that immigration to the U.S. should be limited, so as to achieve population stabilization.

Other Sierra Club members thought that the immigration issue was too far from the Club's core environmentalist mission, and were also concerned that involvement would impair the organization's political ability to pursue its other objectives. In 1998, 60.1% of Sierra Club voting members voted that the organization should remain neutral on America's immigration policies, while 39.2% supported a measure calling for stricter curbs on immigration to the United States.

In 1996, after the Sierra Club board adopted a neutral position on immigration policy, some members who were advocates of immigration reduction organized themselves as "SUSPS" – a name originally derived from "Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization", which now stands for "Support U.S. Population Stabilization." SUSPS advocates a return to the Sierra Club's "traditional" (1970–1996) immigration policy stance. SUSPS has called for fully closing the borders of the United States, and for returning to immigration levels established by the Immigration Act of 1924, which includes strict ethnic quotas.

The controversy resurfaced when a group of three immigration reduction proponents ran in the 2004 Sierra Club Board of Directors election, hoping to move the Club's position away from a neutral stance on immigration, and to restore the stance previously held. Groups outside of the Club became involved, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and MoveOn. Of the three candidates, two (Frank Morris and David Pimentel), were on the board of the anti-immigration group Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America and two (Richard Lamm and Frank Morris) were on the board of directors or the board of advisors of the Federation for American Immigration Reform; both had also held leadership positions within the NAACP. Their candidacies were denounced by a fourth candidate, Morris Dees of the SPLC, as a "hostile takeover" attempt by "radical anti-immigrant activists." The immigration reduction proponents won 7% of all votes cast in the election. In 2005, members voted 102,455 to 19,898 against a proposed change to "recognize the need to adopt lower limits on migration to the United States."

With the increased number of progressive activists joining the club in recent years, the Sierra Club has dramatically shifted its stance on immigration further towards the affirmative. Today, the Sierra Club supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, opposes a border wall and works with immigrant groups to promote environmental justice.

Controversy over housing stance

The Sierra Club has come under criticism for opposing high-density housing development projects in California, which are intended to reduce housing shortage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) at UC Berkeley Law, said that the Sierra Club's opposition to California Senate Bill 827 - which would require cities to allow denser and taller housing near public transport centrals, and ease the parking requirements that cities can impose on housing developments - was "surprising". He wrote, "is Sierra Club an organization of wealthy homeowners who want to keep newcomers out of their upscale, transit-rich areas? Or are they actually committed to fighting climate change by providing enough housing for Californians in low-carbon, infill areas? Because their opposition to SB 827 unfortunately indicates more of the former than the latter."

Affiliates and subsidiaries

The Sierra Club Foundation was founded in 1960 by David R. Brower. A 501(c)(3) organization, it was founded after the Internal Revenue Service revoked the Sierra Club's tax-exempt status due to the group's political activities.

The Sierra Club added its first Canadian chapter in 1963 and in 1989 opened a national office in Ottawa. Canadian affiliates of the Sierra Club operate under the Sierra Club Canada.

In 1971, volunteer lawyers who had worked with the Sierra Club established the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. This was a separate organization that used the "Sierra Club" name under license from the Club; it changed its name to Earthjustice in 1997.

The Sierra Student Coalition (SSC) is the student-run arm of the Sierra Club. Founded by Adam Werbach in 1991, it has 30,000 members.

The Sierra Club Voter Education Fund is a 527 group that became active in the 2004 Presidential election by airing television advertisements about the major party candidates' positions on environmental issues. Through the Environmental Voter Education Campaign (EVEC), the Club sought to mobilize volunteers for phone banking, door-to-door canvassing and postcard writing to emphasize these issues in the campaign. 

The organization maintains a publishing imprint, Sierra Club Books, publishing books on environmental issues, wilderness photographic essays, nature guides, and other related subjects. They publish the Sierra Club Calendars, perennial bestsellers, featuring photographs by well-known nature photographers such as Galen Rowell. They also publish the John Muir library, which includes many of their founder's titles.

The Wilderness Travel Course is a basic mountaineering class that is administered by the Sierra Club.

The Summer Program (SPROG) is a one-week leadership training program that teaches tools for environmental and social justice activism to young people across the country.

Budget and funding

The Sierra Club's annual budget was $88 million in 2011 and $100 million in 2012. In 2013, the group's budget was $97.8 million.

In 2008, Clorox donated $1.3 million to the Sierra Club in exchange for the right to display the Sierra Club's logo on a line of cleaning products.

In February 2012, it was reported that the Sierra Club had secretly accepted over $26 million in gifts from the natural gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy. The Sierra Club used the Chesapeake Energy money for its Beyond Coal campaign to block new coal-fired power plants and close old ones. Michael Brune reported that he learned of the gifts after he succeeded Carl Pope as executive director of the Sierra Club in 2010. Brune reported that he ended the financial agreement with natural gas industry interests.

In 2014, the Energy and Environment Legal Institute filed a referral with the Internal Revenue Service pointing out that Sierra Club and Sierra Club Foundation were not paying income taxes from sales of solar panels for their partners across the US.

The Sierra Club has an affiliated super PAC. It spent $1,000,575 on the 2014 elections, all of it opposing Republican candidates for office. The Sierra Club is a partner of America Votes, an organization that coordinates and promotes progressive issues.

Donors to the Sierra Club have included David Gelbaum, Michael Bloomberg, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Sierra Club has also received funding from the Democracy Alliance and the Tides Foundation Advocacy Fund.

In 2015, a PR front group, known as the Environmental Policy Alliance, claimed that the Sierra Club and other U.S. environmental groups received funding from groups with ties to Russia's state-owned oil company.

Natural Resources Defense Council

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Natural Resources Defense Council

Abbreviation	NRDC
Motto	The Earth's Best Defense
Established	1970
Founders	John Adams Richard Ayres John Bryson Gus Speth Edward Strohbehn
Type	Non-profit
Purpose	Environmental activism
Headquarters	New York, NY, US
Area served	Worldwide
Method	Advocacy, education, litigation
Membership (2015)	2.4 million
President	Rhea Suh
Budget (2015)	US$151.6 million
Staff (2015)	500
Website	nrdc.org

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a United States-based, non-profit international environmental advocacy group, with its headquarters in New York City and offices in Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; Los Angeles; New Delhi, India; Chicago; Bozeman, Montana; and Beijing, China. Founded in 1970, the NRDC had 2.4 million members in 2015, with online activities nationwide, and a staff of about 500 lawyers, scientists and other policy experts.

The charity monitoring group Charity Navigator gave the Natural Resources Defense Council four out of four stars in its three rating categories: overall, financial practices, and accountability & transparency.

The NRDC was co-founded in 1970 by John Adams, Richard Ayres, John Bryson, Edward Strohbehn, and Gus Speth. The organization states that it seeks sustainable policies from federal, state and local government and industrial corporations. It seeks to influence federal and state environmental and other agencies, the Congress and state legislatures, and the courts to reduce global warming, limit pollution, and generally conserve energy and increase sustainability of commerce and manufacturing. NRDC participates in litigation in federal and state courts of the United States to influence implementation and enforcement of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other federal and state laws protecting the environment. The Council also supports an environmental science program that involves NRDC staff and associated scientists, including a program seeking transformation of manufacturing industries to more sustainable production. In addition, the organization states that it educates the public.

In 2001, NRDC launched the BioGems Initiative to mobilize concerned individuals in defense of exceptional and imperiled ecosystems. The initiative matches NRDC's legal and institutional assets with the work of citizen activists.

It has issued a report on the health effects arising from the September 11, 2001 attacks.

NRDC became involved with community activists in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

NRDC has published a number of studies on nuclear weapon stockpiles around the world, both as monographs and as individual studies in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

In December 2006, Green Day and NRDC jointly launched a website to raise awareness on the petroleum dependence of the US.

Programs

NRDC runs a number of environmental programs:

• The Climate and Clean Air Program focuses on clean air, global warming, transportation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and electric-industry restructuring. This includes the Renewable Energy and Defense Database project with the Pentagon.
• Save the Bees Initiative appealing to the President to take urgent action necessary to save the bee populations from further decline by banning bee-toxic neonics.
• The Health Program works on issues involving drinking water, chemical harm to the environment, and other environmental health threats with the goal of reducing the amount of toxins released into the environment.
• The International Program works worldwide on rainforests, biodiversity, habitat preservation, oceans, marine life, nuclear weapons and global warming, often in conjunction with other programs.
• The Land Program works on issues related to national forests, parks, other public lands, and private forest lands, and works to reduce consumption of wood products.
• The Nuclear Program opposes nuclear weapons. Blocks spent nuclear fuel (SNF) reprocessing, supports SNF disposal in safe geological repositories, works to strengthen standards in uranium mining and nuclear power plant safety
• The Urban Program focuses on environmental issues in urban centers and surrounding areas. Issues include air and water quality, garbage and recycling, transportation, sprawl, and environmental justice.
• The Water and Oceans Program works on issues related to the nation's water quality, fish populations, wetlands and oceans. It also operates regional initiatives such as the Everglades, San Francisco Bay, the San Joaquin River, the Channel Islands of California, and the New York/New Jersey Harbor-Bight.
• The Latino Outreach Program or La Onda Verde de NRDC works to inform and involve Spanish-speaking Latinos in the environmental issues on which NRDC works.
• In July 2008, the NRDC and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. launched a direct mail campaign to encourage citizens to voice opposition to Shell Oil's exploration for oil off the Alaska coast.

OnEarth

OnEarth magazine is a quarterly publication of the NRDC dealing with environmental challenges. The magazine was founded in 1979 as The Amicus Journal. As Amicus, the magazine won the George Polk Award in 1983 for special interest reporting. OnEarth magazine can be accessed online at http://www.onearth.org.

Directors

Rhea Suh is the current president. On June 14, 2010, former NRDC President Frances Beinecke was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Issues

NRDC's stated priorities include curbing global warming, "reviving the world's oceans," defending endangered wildlife and wild places, protecting the public health by preventing pollution, ensuring "safe and sufficient water," and fostering "sustainable communities"

Legislation

NRDC opposed the Water Rights Protection Act, a bill that would prevent federal agencies from requiring certain entities to relinquish their water rights to the United States in order to use public lands. According to opponents, the bill is too broad. They believe the bill "could also block federal fisheries agencies like the United States Fish and Wildlife Service from requiring flows that help salmon find fish ladders and safely pass over dams."

Proponents of the bill disagree with NRDC's stance on the bill, arguing that the current Federal policy defended by NRDC seeks to make users of public lands turn over water rights which in many cases they have paid state or local governments for. Operators of ski areas, ranchers, and farmers, and other users of public land say that the Federal policy defended by NRDC denies them rights to use water for which they have already paid, effectively denying them use of the land. The Water Rights Protection Act is supported by national ski area groups, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Conservation Districts, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the Family Farm Alliance, the National Water Resources Association, the Colorado River Conservation District, the Colorado Association of Conservation Districts, and other interests threatened by existing Federal water policy in the West which the NRDC is defending.

NRDC supported the EPS Service Parts Act of 2014 (H.R. 5057; 113th Congress), a bill that would exempt certain external power supplies from complying with standards set forth in a final rule published by the United States Department of Energy in February 2014. The United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce describes the bill as a bill that "provides regulatory relief by making a simple technical correction to the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act to exempt certain power supply (EPS) service and spare parts from federal efficiency standards."

Effect on administrative law

The NRDC has been involved in the following Supreme Court cases interpreting United States administrative law.

• Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 435 U.S. 519 (1978), which held that courts could not impose additional procedural requirements on administrative agencies beyond that required by the agency's organic statute or the Administrative Procedure Act.
• Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), which gave administrative agencies broad discretion to interpret statute to make policy changes if Congressional intent was unclear. Chevron is now the most-cited case in American case law, even more so than all the citations to famous decisions such as Marbury v. Madison, Brown v. Board of Education, and Roe v. Wade combined.
• Baltimore Gas & Elec. Co. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 462 U.S. 78 (1983) is a United States Supreme Court decision which held to be valid a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rule that the permanent storage of nuclear waste should be assumed to have no environmental impact during the licensing of nuclear power plants.