by Steve LeMaster

“Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”

David Brower – First Executive Director, Sierra Club

John Muir founded The Sierra Club to “Make the mountains glad” in 1892 and is probably the most powerful environmental group in the nation. Originally founded to better the future enjoyment of the wilderness, it has become more radical by promoting anti-growth, anti-technology and espousing populationism. Their priorities now are best illustrated by the animal rights activist and extremist, Paul Watson who was elected to the Sierra Club’s board of directors in 2003.

If you don’t know who Paul Watson is, then a brief history is in order. Paul Watson was a co-founder of Greenpeace and founded the ultra-radical Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) in 1977 after being ousted from the former, for condoning violence in the name of the environment. He quoted to Access Energy in 1982, “I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot the kids who shoot birds”. Watson and his merry band of sea pirates sail the high seas, harassing and sinking fishing boats and endangering people’s lives.

In 2003, he announced that he was overtly “advocating the takeover of the Sierra Club,” claiming to be 3 votes shy of controlling a majority of the 15 member board. When the 2004 election season came around, he made allies with candidates endorsing strict limits to legal immigration. Even though he made promises of using the club’s revenue to address both immigration policy and animal-rights issues, he lost in a record turnout. Despite the loss, he remained on the board until 2006.

“A vegetarian lifestyle as a way to counter the alleged abuse animals endure to feed a hungry and growing global population.”

Broward Sierra News 2002

The American people are a technologically linear progressive society; meaning that we are always striving to invent and reward those with innovative ideas, not punish them. The Sierra Club, on the other hand, despises this and goes out of their way to stymie technological innovation, such as biotechnology. They are a well coordinated group, which pushes the animal rights agenda through campaigns against, what it labels as, “the growing menace” of modern farms.

Florida, 2002. A Case study

Sierra Club extremists endorsed PETA’s logo that eating meat is animal abuse and is what’s contributing to world hunger. It was at this time that the Broward Sierra News championed the quotation above and used PETA and their message that meat eating and livestock farms, in particular, are what’s causing world hunger and animal abuse. Meanwhile, the New York and Michigan Sierra Club chapters promoted  and distributed their “Vegetarian Starter Kit”, by the deliberately misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which is a well known PETA front group. These two groups also encouraged people to sign the “VegPledge” campaign sponsored by EarthSave International, as a way to “save the earth” by going vegetarian. During this time, the New York group cosponsored the “Behind Closed Doors” event with the People for Animal Rights, with the sole purpose of vilifying livestock farms and featuring none other than Gene Bauston of Farm Sanctuary.

Legal Muscle Worthy of Al Capone

As you can see, the Sierra Club, as well as PETA are well funded and well coordinated. They are also well funded on the legal front. The Sierra Club has a long “hit list” of farms that they have targeted for legal action and in the May 2000 issue of their periodical, Sierra, they announced thier intentions to sue large livestock farms from coast to coast. “No one court case will be a magic bullet … You have to fight on multiple legal fronts.” On February 28, 2001, The Club allied itself with the ultra radical Waterkeeper Alliance’s trial lawyer, Robert Kennedy Jr., as a “full partner in litigation” against pork companies. On the very same day, The Club announced that it had filed lawsuits targeting Smithfield Farms across the nation, one of the lawsuits alleged that they were involved in “mafia-style racketeering”, which was summarily bounced out of court.

This has become The Club’s primary tactic by suing farms, such as construction of multiple dairy farms between 1998-2003, because it’s cheap and bogs down those farms in litigation.

The Sierra Legal Defense Fund was founded in 1971 as a non profit law firm to act as a legal arm for its self proclaimed “grassroots”, mafia style tactics. In 1998, the name was changed to EarthJustice Legal Defense Fund or just EarthJustice, who’s sole purpose is to bully, threaten and intimidate businesses and public agencies through frivalous lawsuits. And the military isn’t even immune to the terrorist style tactics of The Club, when it filed a lawsuit in 2004 against the Marines to stop a training exercise on Makua Valley, Hawaii, citing “concern” for supposed endangered species habitats. A response was issued to EarthJustice’s bullying tactics, “To win the war against terrorism and get ready for future battles, the U.S. military must be prepared. The conduct of realistic live-fire training in Makua is part of that preparation.” Four years prior to that, EarthJustice made an attempt to stop the military from training on a small, uninhabited island called, Farallon de Medinilla, citing concern for migratory birds.

“If I knew I had a fatal disease, I would definitely do something like strap dynamite to myself and take out Grand Canyon Dam, or maybe the Maxxam Building in Los Angeles after it’s closed up for the night.”

Darryl Cherney, Earth First!

Profiteering Through Lawsuits

In 1986, California voters approved Proposition 65, which was coauthored by the current Sierra Club executive director, Carl Pope. Proposition 65 “Requires businesses to notify Californians about significant amounts of chemicals in the products they purchase, in their homes or workplaces, or that are released into the environment. By providing this information, Proposition 65 enables Californians to make informed decisions about protecting themselves from exposure to these chemicals. Proposition 65 also prohibits California businesses from knowingly discharging significant amounts of listed chemicals into sources of drinking water.”

What many don’t know is that prop 65 contains a “bounty hunter” clause that encourages trial lawyers to file frivalous lawsuits and cash in on any product that contains a “carcinogen”, no matter how small, that’s listed in the proposition. Violaters of prop 65 can be fined up to $2,500 per day and per violation, while the plaintiffs can make bank by collecting up to 25% of the total fines collected. The radical group, As You Sow (AYS), now get this, made a whopping $1.5 million by playing the lawsuit game between 2000-2002. The president of The Sierra Club and executive director of AYS, Larry Fahn has made hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, by suing anyone and everyone that will kowtow to their tactics.

The reprobates at AYS route their ill gotten gains from prop 65 and dispurses it to other radical groups, such as Robert Kennedy’s Waterkeeper Alliance, David Brower’s Earth Island Institute and Mike Roselle’s Rainforest Action Network and Ruckus Society.

As with many well intentioned organizations, they tend to go radical with time and The Sierra Club is no different. When it was founded, it promoted environmentalism through conservationism, however, greed almost always plays the fundemental role with radicalism. Since conservationism doesn’t have much monetary return, like the current “Go Green” slogan these days, it’s likely to get worse.

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