Sierra Club Sellout Not Forgotten

A one-time member of the Sierra Club's Population Committee [1], Kathleen Parker, has reviewed the secret "donation" made in the mid-1990s which reversed the organization's position on immigration 180 degrees [Sierra Club Sellout on Immigration? [2], Human Events, 8/15/06].

As the United States, in October [3], reaches the astounding plateau of 300 million Americans, I wonder if environmentalists forget that Earth Day [4] founder Sen. Gaylord Nelson [5] and former Sierra Club directors David Brower, Dave Foreman and Martin Linton all urged United States population stabilization.

Are they unaware that the Sierra Club in the 1980s called the United States the most overpopulated nation?

But that was before a contributor handed the Sierra Club over $100 million.

By appearances, it seems that, just as some in business will sacrifice America’s future for the soft-slavery of cheap immigrant labor, the Sierra Club puts its own interests ahead of an environment that is buckling under a mostly immigration-driven population tsunami.

As chronicled closely in VDARE.com [6], investing wizard David Gelbaum did indeed give the Sierra Club more than $100 million to accomplish some worthwhile environmental objectives, particularly purchasing large tracts of land for preservation. However, he was quoted in an October 2004 LA Times article (The Man behind the Land [7]) as saying, "I did tell [Executive Director] Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me."

The Sierra Club was never properly brought to account for receiving a strings-attached "gift" from a Wall Street investor with an agenda. The revelation from a reputable establishment newspaper (one which favors open borders [8]) should have been an Enron level, Richter-scale scandal, but the MSM wasn't interested.

Perhaps reporters coundn't imagine the inheritors of John Muir behaving more like Tony Soprano than Teddy Roosevelt.

Now, as America approaches the dismal 300 Million milestone, perhaps the lazy MSM can be roused into curiosity about why the nation's premier environmental organization allowed its integrity to be gutted. As a result, the American public lost an important voice for environmental numeracy regarding what domestic overpopulation costs in terms of farmland ripped up for housing, water supplies overdrawn, increased pollution and pavement everywhere.