Sierra Club bloc has big plans for Island America

I get the feeling sometimes that if a lot of environmentalists had their way, the Earth would be emptied of everyone except, of course, them.

Naked and free, they would live in harmony with the grizzly bears and sharks, the black widows and the rattlesnakes, while warding off the few outsiders who would presume to trample on their wildflowers and mess up their streams.

In this pristine world, a benevolent Mother Nature would prevail, and the very trees would sing of an Earth without smog, without water pollution, without debris and without, well, anyone in it.

The problem, you see, is that in order to achieve such perfection, the environmentalists would have to go too. But I don’t think they understand that.

My conclusion is based upon yet another effort by members of the Sierra Club to protect the environment by keeping out the people. Not the world environment, but the environment here on Island America.

An anti-immigration faction within the influential, 757,000-member club is once more attempting to control the human population by keeping a lot of people out of a country that once welcomed those “yearning to be free.” If a handful of xenophobes have their way, immigrants can yearn all they want, but the golden door still ain’t going to open to just anyone.

What we have here in a club noted more for saving the darter snail than saving America is the grim possibility of an unholy alliance between environmentalists and jingoists that is almost as disconcerting as the military-industrial complex. Fighting Mother Nature and Father Hatred at the same time could keep us busy forever.

What’s happening is that a slate of candidates running for the club’s 15-member board wants to push for limits on immigration. With the help of three like-minded existing board members, their election would give them a majority vote, and a once-proud organization would suddenly find itself trying to decide who should be kept off Island America and who should be let on.

I’ll lay you odds that if the immigration rebels have their way, those being kept off won’t be the fair-skinned Northern Europeans, amigo.

A similar effort was made six years ago when a small group of super-ethno-centrists tried to get the club to endorse restrictions on immigration, an idea that was, thank God, voted down with a decisive plurality. Unfortunately, they haven’t given up the idea that the only way to save the trees is to keep out the foreigners.

Back then, Executive Director Carl Pope worried that among those seeking the immigration restrictions were elements of the ultra right, out to enhance an agenda of “America for Americans.” This time around, he told a Times reporter, he was concerned that a campaign against immigration by the club would expose environmental groups to accusations of racism.

He’s right. I realize it seems as though I’m playing what’s become known as the “race card” here, but that’s only because the whole anti-immigration movement is aimed not at the Swedes or Danes but at those brown-skinned people from south of the border whose growing presence in the U.S. creates a kind of cultural imbalance. Very soon now, they may outnumber the racists, and then what?

Fighting human migration just won’t work. We’ve always been a wandering species, looking for easier food sources, cleaner water, a kinder climate, better trade routes, safer neighborhoods, a classier ambience and more abundant jobs. Pass all the laws you want. Barbwire the borders. Mine the ports of entry. They’re still going to keep right on coming.

If those within the Sierra Club truly care about the people of the planet as well as the Earth itself, the direction of their concern would be to better the economic conditions of those nations of the world whose “wretched refuse” keep wanting to come to the U.S., where work seems abundant and slices of the American pie plentiful. We remain the gleaming goal, the Emerald City of those who seek better lives in a darkening era.

The message we’ll send to the rest of the world in an anti-immigration takeover of the Sierra Club leadership will only strengthen the notion of a fat, rich, self-indulgent people unwilling to share their largess with those who have nothing. The growing hatred toward the nation that once prided itself on being a melting pot will only intensify.

About 200 years ago, John Keats wrote: “Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave/A paradise for a sect.”

The fanatics still have their dream of a paradise reserved for a sect of the elite that will use its supposed quest for a pristine environment as an excuse to keep out the many for the sake of the few.

Isolated by renewed animosity toward our arrogance, we will be doomed to discover how lonely a pristine plot of earth our Island America can be.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.