Boone Pickens has hand out for handout

T. Boone Pickens, acting like a typical billionaire American businessman, wants Congressional stimulus money to fund converting diesel trucks to natural gas.

Total hog-troughing? A cool $28 bil, at $75K per semi.

Hey, Boone? Go to Carl Pope and the Sierra Club. Pope’s already got his head buried up your ass on this issue anyway.

Sierra Club stupidity-sellout on Boone Pickens

For Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, I guess drinking the Kool-Aid Clorox this spring wasn’t enough.

Now, via e-mail, he’s officially signing off on T. Boone Pickens’ self-serving idea to take wind-generated electricity’s natural gas savings to use natural gas as a motor fuel.

Worse yet, in the e-mail, the alleged “action.sierraclub.org” hyperlink actually goes to a “pickensplan.com” URL as a mirror link.

So, here’s what I e-mailed back:

First, I AM a newspaper editor, and hell, no, I won't send myself a letter, or write a column about Boone Pickens' largely self-serving plan.

This is Sierra's stupidest thing since the Clorox “greenwash” debacle, which is why I'm not renewing my membership, a decision, as well as commentary on the Clorox greenwash, I have blogged.

Second, I don’t like that your alleged "action.sierraclub.org" hyperlink in your e-mail is actually a ghost link to a pickensplan.com webpage.

Third, other environmentalists and environmental bloggers better than me have pointed out the details of how Pickens' plan has a LARGE self-serving element.

Fourth, this is the man who financed the Swift Boating of John Kerry in 2004, then welshed on paying up on a challenge when people proved that the Swift Boating attack had demonstrable falsehoods in it.

Carl, back to my hyperlink.

I think your leadership gets worse all the time, and I won't renew my Sierra membership until Sierra's board of directors non-renews your contract.

Eff you, Carl Pope. AND the Sierra board of directors you rode into town on.

If you want to sound off to him, even though you didn’t get an e-mail from him, here you go.

Update:Oh, for the idiot commentors who think Carl Pope is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or, worse yet, that Boone Pickens is, here’s the High Country News lowdown on Pickens’ right wing suckupitis.

This HCN line is classic:

He's the Republican oil billionaire who recently saw the light on the need for alternative energy and has sponsored a flood of windmill-porn TV ads to make sure the rest of America gets the message.

Doesn’t get much clearer than that, now, does it?

Well, unfortunately, for King Carl Pope (nice back-pun, eh?) it’s still “clear as mud” as to Pickens’ ultimate angle on all this.

Sierra Club doesn’t really love Made in U.S.A. — hypocrisy alert 2

Boy, the Sierra Club is doing well on corporate bullshit this month.

Immediately below this post, I note Sierra’s hypocrisy about population control, also linked just to the right in the archives.

This month’s Sierra mag has another item of hypocrisy in the Sierra Club bulletin.

Sierra touts how it’s working for American jobs, about two-thirds of the way down the webpage:

What can fight global warming, slash energy costs, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and revitalize our economy? The Green Jobs for America campaign, launched in April by the Sierra Club with the United Steelworkers and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Focusing on 12 states, the campaign promotes private investment and government policies to expand renewable energy.

Really?

Hey, Executive Director Carl Pope.

Remember a few years ago when I, and thousands of other people, asked where a tchotchke Sierra Club backpack for renewing members was made? Your staff wouldn’t even tell us what country it came from period, let alone whether or not it was American-made. Instead, you said, in essence, “Trust us.”

That garden bag on the flier inside this month’s magazine, offered to basic members? Is it made in the U.S.? I highly doubt it. You certainly make no claim to that end on the flier.

If you’re wondering the same thing shoot Carl an e-mail and ask him.

Sierra Club LOVES population control — outside of U.S.; big hypocrisy alert

For several years, ending a couple of years ago, Sierra Club annual board elections were sharply contested in part based on whether or not the club should take an official stance on population control in the United States.

Practically, of course, that meant taking, or not taking, an official stance on illegal aliens and illegal immigration, and what to do about that.

Well, Executive Director Carl Pope, ironically or hypocritically, himself a former political director for Zero Population Growth (see his Wiki bio), got the board he wanted, got Sierra governance changed, and kept population growth worriers from being easily nominated to run for board positions.

Imagine my surprise when I got my July/August issue of Sierra magazine (I’m going to keep the subscription until my Sierra Club membership officially expires, had an article touting birth control in Ethiopia.

The subhead is even explicit: “Ethiopia, the cradle of humanity, faces up to family planning.”

So, Carl Pope, why is it OK to talk about family planning there, in your mag, but not about population issues here on your board?

If you’re wondering the same thing, shoot Carl an e-mail.

Sierra Club and Carl Pope riffing on Bush?

In what deserves and gets both “irony alert” and “hypocrisy alert” tags, it would seem that Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope is stealing a page out of President George Bush’s “unitary executive” idea.

Except in this case, the “unitary executive” means the individual creative force of Sierra Club volunteers gets united under Carl Pope. How else to explain Project Renewal?

Ditto, “unitary executive” means the contribution dollars of individual Sierra members plays second fiddle to branding dollars from Clorox.

Oh, and there’s another irony alert here. Despite Sierra HQ stressing over the past few years that it does not want to address in any way, shape or form the impact of additiona population numbers, especially from illegal immigration, on U.S. environmental issues, at one time Pope was political director for Zero Population Growth.

Dave Brower is probably turning over in his grave as we speak. And, another irony alert. Before he died, Brower grew more concerned over population growth.

Project Renewal vs my likely Sierra membership nonrenewal

Of course, per information I received on my election ballot for Sierra Club board of directors, maybe some Sierra top staff want that.

Anyway, what is Project Renewal? For Sierra members like me who aren’t activist members, in a nutshell, it’s a way for Sierra Club HQ staff, especially top executives, to constrain, if not kill off, volunteer activists by “chaining” them to paid staffers and constraining their efforts through circumscribed channels.

Already in November, Sierra HQ essentially killed a Sierra blog about Project Renewal and moved further comment/discussion to Sierra’s own bulletin boards. It’s an easy way to control discussion. And, a clear indicator the folks out in San Francisco did NOT like the feedback they were getting from the field already then.

If you want the details about the project (not at all discussed in Sierra, the club’s glossy bimonthly magazine), you have to go to a Sierra bulletin board and log in.

But, per the Virginia Chapter, here is an overview of Project Renewal. (PDF)

• Separation of policy deliberation from implementation by campaigns and activists. OCSC contends the functions of each were so different they called for separate bodies. Chapter leaders believe ExComs handle both functions just fine.
• Leadership of all national committees and campaigns would be by co-leaders, one volunteer and one staff member, with one held accountable for the committee’s results. This would centralize authority, especially with staff.
• National issue committees to be replaced with temporary task forces and advisors. After an outcry by volunteer leaders, committees were restored, but their placement and authority remains questionable.
• Establishment of an “Issues and Skills Network” that would be “self organizing and identifying.” While the idea has merit, this network has no clear way to connect with or be accountable to the rest of the Sierra Club.

This radical upset of existing club structure was strongly opposed by many national leaders. The Virginia Chapter passed a resolution at its November meeting objecting to the process and the elimination of issue committees. Rarely were members of the national conservation entities consulted by the OCSC as they made these changes. By the close of a comment period in January, 28 chapters of 64 nationally had weighed in and 26 were opposed to the changes.

Then, there’s this,
critical assessment of Project Renewal:

Unfortunately, it does some things just as well as the worst of the business world. It scrubs out the best in favor of the top-down business world’s worst. Like so many poorly led businesses, this organization’s leadership doesn’t know how the place really works.

Maybe Sierra Executive Director Carl Pope can learn management skills from Clorox, with all that greenwash money Clorox will provide.