The United States has a proud heritage of conservation of natural resources and respect for the nature. An organization which long stood for this heritage was the Sierra Club. Founded by premier naturalist John Muir in 1892, Sierra became a strong political force for environmental concerns.
Today, however, Sierra has fallen on hard times. During the past five years it’s lost 60 percent of its members and supporters, Since 2022 it has done three rounds of employee layoffs to deal with a huge budget shortfall. What happened?
At one time the the club opposed levels of mass immigration which promoted sprawl and other threats to the environment. But its leaders decided to betray this reasonable commitment for financial gain. This happened when they accepted a donation of more $100 million from businessman David Gelbaum, along with Gelbaum’s stipulation that it would no longer support immigration restriction.
After this surrender of principle, it wasn’t long before radical leftists almost completely hijacked the organization to serve their agendas. Sierra went from safeguarding literal swamps and wetlands to promoting the fever swamps of Woke ideology. A telling illustration was when one volunteer supported an effort to protect the habitat of wolves. A Sierra staffer replied: “That’s fine. . . . But what do wolves have to do with equity, justice and inclusion?”
Sierra has gone broke by going Woke. Some describe the far-leftists who use (and abuse) environmentalism in this fashion as watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside, and very very seedy.
Read more at reason.com