Sierra Club Clout, Desert Legislation

More than a half-million Sierra Club members around the country must be wondering which Sierra Club your reporter (“Environmental Movement Struggling as Clout Fades,” Sept. 21) was referring to, and why he paints such a bleak picture of leour movement.

Fading clout? Ask a member of Congress from Delaware who received hundreds, if not thousands, of calls and letters on the California desert bill. Ask a local activist in Kansas who participated in one of more than 50 press conferences around the country on the EPA’s dioxin reassessment. Ask a member of a community organization like the Jesus People Against Pollution in Mississippi working with the Sierra Club to clean up a local toxic waste dump.

Over and over again, the message is clear. While our opponents, who for obvious reasons are our most vocal detractors, try to suggest we are losing ground, or that we are losing touch with the economic realities of the country, or that we have grown big and unwieldy, this is most often a poorly disguised effort to divert attention away from our very real strengths.

For instance, the Sierra Club has a book publishing division and a division that oversees wilderness expeditions and a legal division and a political action committee and a lobbying office not because we have lost our sense of mission, but because we have found over our 102-year history that these are precisely the tools we need to educate and mobilize the people of this country to make real and lasting changes in public policy.

J. ROBERT COX

President, Sierra Club

San Francisco

The article struck a nerve! It portrayed the plight of a disillusioned Sierra Club member, James Connor of Montana. Apparently, Connor left the Sierra Club because the organization endorsed a bill that threatens to put 35 million acres in five states under wilderness protection. This draws a direct parallel with our situation in California and the desert bill.

Like Connor, I am a longtime Sierra Club member and have served in several responsible positions. For more than eight years I have been actively involved with the desert bill and have thoroughly explored the proposed wilderness areas with other Sierra Club members on behalf of the club. Our findings have been written down, depicted on appropriate maps and presented to the Sierra Club Council and executive committees. An 81-page document of findings intended to provide valid information so the desert bill could be appropriately modified and corrected, where needed, has been purposefully unacknowledged.

Although I strongly favor more desert protection, I know that the current bill has been misrepresented and is too extreme.

ROBERT JAUSSAUD JR.

Canyon Lake

The economic downturn we have labored under for the last few years has significantly cut back the amount of funding available for many nonprofit organizations.

The few very large organizations mentioned in the article may or may not have management difficulties due to their considerable size. Whatever the answer to that question, this limited sampling does not comprise an adequate survey.

The disagreement in the ranks about how to address certain environmental concerns is not surprising given the complexity of the problems being addressed.

Despite ups and downs, the environmental movement is not a fading fad any more than breathing clean air or having beautiful natural surroundings is a fad. With or without national legislation, major gains are being made toward a more sustainable future as people are coming to understand that good business and a healthy, balanced ecology are compatible rather than at odds.

BOB WALTER

Member of the Eco-Cities Council

Eco-Home Network President

Los Angeles

The Times told it like it is in “Desert Bill--a Messy Anticlimax” (editorial, Sept. 22). After using every possible parliamentary trick to try and derail the California Desert Protection Act, the final chapter of the bill’s tortuous legislative path is now being played out in a behind-closed-doors filibuster in the Senate. This latest election year assault on the desert bill threatens to undermine final enactment of the bill and thereby the ecological and economic future of the California desert.

Beyond these deliberate attempts to govern by gridlock and deep-six the bill, another threat to it is an alternative compromise package that pays homage to the year-end habit of members of Congress to festoon bills headed to the President’s desk with extraneous legislative adornments. This package faces an uncertain reception in the House, where it could be rejected or modified and sent back to Senate--leading us back to where we are now.

JAY THOMAS WATSON

Regional Director

The Wilderness Society

San Francisco