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2008 Election Candidate Forum:
The Candidates
David Scott's responses to the 16 questions of the candidate forum:
Candidate responses were limited to 150 words per question.
1: What leadership positions have you held in the Sierra Club and what have you accomplished in those positions?
Major positions held:
• Vice-Chair, Conservation Governance Committee, 2007. Appointed 2005
• Chair, Sustainable Planet Strategy Team, 2004-2005. Appointed 2002
• Regional Vice President, 1999-2001
• Chair, Great Lakes Ecoregion Task Force, 1998-2001
• Chair, Ohio Chapter, 1999-2002
• Conservation Chair, Ohio Chapter, 1996-1999
• Conservation Chair, Central Ohio Group, 1995-1998
Accomplishments:
• Led a 19,000-member Chapter.
• Helped lead the committee that coordinates the Club’s Conservation Program
• Helped develop our Energy Policy and plan the Smart Energy Initiative, including successful projects on car emissions, mercury reductions, renewables and offshore drilling
• Led the Arctic Refuge fight in Ohio, where a former Republican senator cast crucial votes against drilling
• Led a successful legislative fight against giving away Great Lakes public trust lands
• Led efforts to protect the Tongass National Forest old growth – a congressional measure to strip funding for Tongass logging roads was sponsored by an Ohioan.
2: What, if any, endorsements have you received from Club chapters or leaders?
I've been endorsed by Sierra Club President Robbie Cox, Vice President for Conservation Robin Mann, Secretary Sanjay Ranchod, Director Ellen Pillard, and the following chapters: Missouri, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Ohio, John Muir (Wisconsin), Loma Prieta (San Francisco Bay Area of California), West Virginia, Maine, and the North Star (Minnesota) Chapter.
3: The Board of Directors has appointed the Organizational Change Steering Committee to come up with recommendations for making changes to the organizational structure of the Club. The OCSC has come up with a draft proposal called Project Renewal which will be acted on at the February Board meeting. Please present your thoughts on Project Renewal and, in particular, whether you, given the opportunity, would vote in favor of the OCSC's current recommendations.
The OCSC’s recommendations are undergoing revision, which is good. I applaud the OCSC’s withdrawal of proposals to expand the Council and abolish issue committees. I support some changes to the current structure. We have so many entities that they end up diminishing each other’s effectiveness as they compete with each other to fill vacancies, budgets are spread too thin and too many lack staff support. Thoughtful reform can strengthen our organization.
I have differences with the OCSC’s approach and proposal. I would have preferred to modify the existing governance structure. Their proposal for volunteer leaders to be appointed by a “Coordinating Pair” of one volunteer and one staff member concerns me because it appears to give staff a 50 percent say in volunteer appointments. Before I’d approve any restructuring proposal, I’d ask lots of questions, and I’d want far more detailed answers about how the proposed structure would actually work.
4: What special abilities would you bring to Sierra Club leadership?
I’ve worked for twenty years as a poverty lawyer, helping people avoid homelessness, get medical care -- helping people survive in a society that is increasingly difficult for the poor. I have also taught university writing courses.
As a lawyer, I understand legislation, the courts, and the regulatory process. As a poverty lawyer, I also understand the needs of an “other America” that is still a world apart from mainstream environmental organizations. Many of my clients are minorities or disabled. I bring an informed perspective to club discussions about diversity and environmental justice.
My writing skills would help my Board work immeasurably. Our Energy Policy and our Farmworker Support Resolution are both better documents because of my efforts. I’ve had letters published in the New York Times and Newsweek, opinion pieces in Ohio newspapers and articles in various Club publications. I can be an articulate voice for the Club.
5: What do you view as the most important responsibilities of a Sierra Club Director?
First, stewardship: assuring the long-term soundness of the club, which includes helping the club raise revenues and adopt budgets that will support our current work and leave a healthy Sierra Club for future members. Second, setting broad policy and direction for the Executive Director, other lead staff and volunteer leaders to follow and implement, and holding them accountable for doing what they have committed to do. Third, being a responsible and effective spokesperson for the club. Fourth, delegating well: assuring that the Board doesn’t get involved in decisions that don’t need to reach the Board level. Taking all authority disempowers other volunteers, and good leaders don’t do it.
6: Having prioritized energy and climate work with the Smart Energy Solutions conservation initiative, what do you see as the most important things that the Sierra Club must do to respond to the urgent threat of climate change and win victories on this issue in the coming years?
Here is what the Sierra Club can do about global warming:
• Tell the truth about what is needed. We need effective carbon emissions legislation and a US-backed international accord.
• Build public demand for the next steps. Building demand includes rallies, lobbying, and media work.
• Support candidates who get it. Expose ones who don’t. We must make global warming a campaign issue.
• Keep doing what we’re doing right. Our Cool Cities Campaign has secured commitments from over 700 local governments. Our Coal Campaign has blocked dirty power plants.
• Get funding for innovative campaigns. I support a proposal for creating wildlife corridors so that some species can survive habitat loss.
• Think bigger. We’re now exploring a Sierra Club effort in China, and that’s an important step.
• Encourage corporations to act responsibly. And use our expertise and credibility to help ordinary citizens reduce their energy use.
7: Many people feel that the environment is not an important factor in deciding federal elections. Why do you think this is, and what strategies should the Club pursue for electing pro-environment candidates to office?
Many voters wrongly assume that government is protecting the environment. When it comes to wilderness protection, voters know even less about what’s happening, and the TV-dominated media doesn’t educate them well. If voters saw forests being clearcut or wolves being slaughtered on the news more often, both might stop. But the war, economic news and celebrity culture crowd out much environmental coverage.
The good news is that global warming has finally become a mainstream issue: Time runs cover stories. Many presidential candidates now address global warming and energy in their campaign materials. We need to confront them and other political candidates and politely pose tough questions about what they’ll do about our issues. And we need to do far more accountability work – including recognition for good votes. A recent accountability campaign on Senator Dominici’s awful energy votes had a noticeable effect on his poll numbers, and he decided to retire.
8: The environment is sometimes an important factor in deciding local and state elections. What strategies should the club pursue for electing pro-environment candidates to local and state offices?
The Club’s Political Committee is headed in the right direction here. The Sierra Club must build state and local networks of well-trained, active political committees. Electing good local candidates means trained volunteers and staff must do the work of creating good questionnaires and interviewing candidates as part of a fair, non-partisan screening process. We also need to raise far more money to fund state and local political efforts, and do more accountability work.
9: What do you feel is the image of environmentalists in general and of the Sierra Club in particular, and how would you change or reinforce that image?
We are respected as a credible source. An Aspen Institute survey of Congress ranked us as the most effective environmental lobbying group by far. The bad news is that polls show much of the public regards environmentalists as shrill. And even some environmentally-minded citizens reacted negatively when we rejected different ways of increasing the energy supply. We shouldn’t shed our convictions just to please critics, but we have to communicate wisely.
How can we reduce negative perceptions? First, by a commitment to accuracy: our credibility is our greatest asset. Second, by recognizing that many thoughtful Americans disagree with our positions on some issues. Americans want clean energy, but affordable energy matters, too. Americans support protecting wildlife, but protecting wilderness increasingly means working with ranchers and conservative legislators.
We have to show people why we’ve taken the positions we have. And we have to recognize that sometimes victory only comes incrementally.
10: What do you see as the role of outings in the Club, both National outings (including international) and those organized by chapters and groups? What changes would you like to see in these programs?
The obvious potential of outings is that people care more about what they’ve seen up close and personal. I spent two months in central Alaska in 2000 and then spent time in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest in 2001. When I made congressional lobbying visits about Alaska wilderness protection, that time was invaluable in helping me convey real feeling for what I wanted to protect.
Outings have to be fun -- our national outings program seems to be succeeding well at providing that. I’m sure many chapter and group outings do as well. I’d like to see us expand programs like Inner City Outings and Building Bridges to the Outdoors as part of an energetic outreach to minorities and young people.
11: The Club is structured with a Board of Directors, governance committees, Council of Club Leaders, chapters, groups, and sections as the prominent entities. If you could change this structure or how it functions, how would you change it?
See my answer to the Project Renewal question above. I support a review and streamlining of national entities – consolidating redundant entities and looking for ways to increase the authority and budgets of those that we kept intact. I would not have gone as far as the OCSC proposals go. I do not see a pressing need for other structural changes – to the Council or chapters or groups, for instance. What we need to do is involve more people and get more people doing activist work, but that can be done in the existing chapters and group structure.
12: What, if any, are the key differences between 21st century grassroots organizing and 20th century grassroots organizing, and how might the Sierra Club change in response?
The obvious difference is the importance of the internet as an organizing and advocacy tool. The danger is that the ease of “point-and-click activism” might blind us to the continued importance of time-honored advocacy tactics: getting constituents to call, write or visit their legislators, knocking on doors for good candidates, turning people out at rallies. But we need to use the internet well – to use social networking sites and use technology to make it easy for people to join together, to contact legislators and press for change.
We’re seeing more campaigns focused on getting corporations to act responsibly – for example, pressuring mass catalogue mailers to stop cutting Canada’s roadless boreal forests for throwaway products. We need to effectively engage in more of those activities – to broaden our focus beyond traditional lobbying. There’s also a major role for climate action rallies like the recent “Step It Up” events.
13: What new technologies, and what new organizational processes should the Club adopt to improve the connection between National operations and grassroots leadership?
The club seems headed in the right direction with the new HELEN database and Convio. From what I’ve seen, we’ll be able to do a much better job of keeping track of what members are doing so we can target messages to specific groups of activists.
14: What are some measures the Club should take to improve leadership development? What other grassroots capacity-building actions, if any, would you recommend?
I’m glad to see the new Leadership Development Program being offered to chapters. It should be improved and expanded. I’d like to see more national staff whose dedicated task was to directly help group and chapter issue activists. And the volunteers who have worked on Chapter Capacity Building Grants need an opportunity to show whether that program has been effective or can be effective.
15: The Sierra Club has limited resources. Where is it most important for the Club to focus its volunteer and financial resources over the next four years?
One thing we must focus volunteer and financial resources on is getting more volunteer and financial resources. The ambitious Climate Fundraising Campaign has to succeed if we are to have the resources and legislative clout to do what needs to be done to confront the threat of global warming. And we have to expand our membership: numbers give us strength.
What is most important in conservation terms? Several things. Getting effective national legislation to start reducing carbon dioxide emissions now – not after it’s too late. Getting a binding post-Kyoto global treaty with strong US support. Undoing eight years of Bush – reinstating Roadless Rule protections for forests, reauthorizing the Endangered Species Act, passing Mining Reform. The must-do list is a long one.
Strengthening our Political Program should also be a priority over the next four years. We need to increase our ability to elect pro-environmental candidates at every level of government.
16: The club is undertaking work to bring more youth and diverse cultures into our membership and leadership. What specific strategies would you suggest?
If we want to get more young people engaged, we need to talk to more young people. There are lots of things we can do – from exploring the potential of social networking sites as organizing tools to seeking funding for Youth Climate Action work, as we are doing in a current fundraising proposal. As Vice-Chair of CGC, I’ve made it a point to choose young activists when I have filled leadership positions in the Club.
Increasing diversity also requires us to look beyond our traditional priorities. Environmental Justice principles should be incorporated broadly into our programs, and we need more EJ staff. We need to be more creative in finding common ground with other people’s biggest concerns – such as working to improve conditions in our urban areas, supporting efforts to train people and get them jobs in the new energy economy, and expanding outreach efforts like Inner City Outings.
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