Sierra Club Back to Basics

Sierra Club members were quite clear in their vote to conserve the original mission of their organization: They would not mix their message of environmentalism with an anti-immigrant agenda.

The results of the weeks-long mail-in election for board of directors can only be good for the venerable club’s ongoing work. The worry that the anti-immigrant slate would gain a majority on the board shook awake its complacent membership. About 22% of members voted, almost three times the level of the last election and a greater percentage than at any time in the last three decades.

The anxiety-inducing election also might provoke the group into new debate on some of the tougher environmental issues of the day. In a pragmatic move, the Sierra Club has backed off from working on such hot topics as the role that overpopulation plays in pollution and habitat destruction, opting in favor of areas where it feels it can have more effect.

The anti-immigrant slate argued that it alone was brave enough to tackle such issues.

“I am not sitting on this board to represent people; I am on this board to represent endangered species,” current board member Paul Watson told Times reporters last month. He favors more limits on immigration to the U.S.

Watson arguably represents endangered species, but only those in his backyard. As a study published in the journal Nature showed earlier this month, hundreds of animal species are in imminent danger of extinction in developing countries such as Mexico -- while efforts to protect habitat are focused in other places. U.S. immigration controls would do nothing to save these critically endangered animals.

Backyard environmentalism isn’t full-fledged environmentalism. There is no saving one corner of the world when air and ocean pollution travel the world over, along with the growing human population that’s sprawling much of it and transporting exotic species that wipe out natives.

Watson correctly identifies global overpopulation as a valid environmental concern. It’s conflating that with U.S. immigration issues and U.S. environmentalism that made the election so contentious.