I've been a member of the Sierra Club for at least 20 years. I joined it when I lived in Starkville, Mississippi, and the local group in that town provided a warm fellowship for which I was grateful. Likewise, here in the Louisville area, I've attended who knows how many nature slide shows by local members, or hikes in nearby state parks, or potluck parties sponsored by the Louisville group.
But now I am leaving the Club, because of the incredible betrayal of the Club of its principles and its membership---this month, it was disclosed that the Club received $26 million dollars between 2007 and 2010 from Chesapeake Energy, a major natural gas company, while advocating the use of natural gas as a bridge fuel towards a future of renewable energy. The Club now asserts that it does not and will not accept donations from the fossil fuel industry, but it appears that the Club mislead its membership about the nature and scope of these donations before they were disclosed this month. These revelations come several years after the Club's acceptance of donations from the Clorox company in return for Clorox's use of the Sierra Club on their line of "green" products (products not properly vetted by the Club's own internal committee for such endorsements)---and the Club's replacement of the leadership of the Florida chapter of the Club and suspension of that chapter, after they complained about this. (When I joined the Club circa 1990, one thing I was impressed by was the Club's democratic structure of local chapters and groups. Apparently there are limits to how democratic the Club is.) In any event, it is absolutely outrageous that the Club would ever accept donations on that scale from interests directly affected by the Club's advocacy.
The scope of the betrayal is greater when we consider the larger issues. It turns out that what is going on is that there is a battle in progress, not between environmental NGOs and the energy industry, but between competing energy industries. There are three leading contenders in the electric energy marketplace: Coal, natural gas, and nuclear. These industries produce respectively about 45%, 24% and 20% of the electricity used in the United States (most of the remainder is renewable energy, mostly hydroelectric with some wind). Coal is inexpensive and is expected to be abundant for a long time, but it is regarded as dirty and is a major source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Natural gas is somewhat cleaner (notwithstanding concern about "fracking") but it historically has been subject to large swings in price. Nuclear is capable of producing large amounts of energy at stable prices with essentially no carbon emissions, but it has enormous potential liabilities in terms of safety and waste, and the capital expenses in building new plants are formidable. Each of these industries is actively engaged in promoting itself, but each of these industries also works against its two competitors. (Renewables are not considered a serious threat to these industries because wind and solar energy cannot serve as "base load" uninterruptible sources of energy, and they will be only a small fraction of the energy pie for a long time.) Now as it happens, the Club has mounted legal battles in various places to close coal power plants and to prevent new coal power plants from being built. Presumably the Club has done this for all the right reasons: coal is the most dangerous source of energy in terms of global warming. But the payments the Club has received from the natural gas industry (Chesapeake Energy) to support its campaign against coal puts things in a rather different light: the Club has joined one side in the competition between these two fossil fuel industries. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Club has promoted a fossil fuel while taking money from that industry.
This story brought to mind something I read a year or two ago---the claim that the biggest enemies of the nuclear industry were not the environmentalists (dirty hippies), but instead the coal and natural gas industry. Much of the conservative media (including pro-business as well as libertarian media) is sympathetic to the fossil fuel industry and not friendly to nuclear power; it's not unusual to read complaints about government subsidies for nuclear power in that media. Nuclear advocates in turn complain that the fossil fuel industry has its own array of subsidies, which are quite large. The problem is that the conservative media---particularly libertarian media---is often paid for by the fossil fuel industry. (I recall reading that the modern libertarian movement was largely jump-started by petroleum interests.)
Now when I learned these things, I was still sympathetic to nuclear power (having read some compelling arguments for nuclear power, including the Gwyneth Cravens bookPower to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy). After Fukishima, I am perhaps less sympathetic to nuclear. But I still agree with James Hansen, the well-known NASA climate scientist, who advocates replacing coal with advanced nuclear energy. Advanced nuclear energy (or generation IV nuclear) would be much safer than current technology, and capable of burning present-day nuclear waste as fuel. Hansen says we have enough depleted uranium and nuclear fuel on hand right now to power the country for 1,000 years. If we agree that we must keep atmospheric carbon dioxide below 350 ppm, this is the only feasible way it can be done (barring substantial progress on energy storage and solar power). Hansen has some choice words for environmental NGOs who continue to oppose nuclear power, and who in some cases accept money from competing industries. It would seem that the Sierra Club is one of these NGOs.
By the way, there are hints that there is other mischief in the environmental and energy area. When the Keystone pipeline controversy surfaced last year, there were allegations that Saudi or other foreign petroleum interests were funding the international environmentalist groups that were mobilizing against that pipeline. I do not recall that these allegations were substantiated, but there is a cold logic to them: The Saudis would have a strong interest in keeping the United States from developing North American energy resources, and dependent on Saudi oil. Indeed, it appears that "peak oil" is not quite happening as expected, and the United States has within its reach a large measure of energy independence. With war threatening in the Middle East, this is difficult to ignore. Unfortunately, the true imperative is to turn away from fossil fuels as fast as we can. And the Sierra Club has not been helpful in that regard.
(For more on the environmentalist NGOs and the energy industry, see Johann Hari, "The Wrong Kind of Green," The Nation, March 22, 2010. Concerning Clorox, the Sierra Club and the Florida chapter of the Club, see the March 29, 2008 article by Pierre Montague, "Sierra Club removes leadership of its Florida chapter," which appeared on grist.org.)