|
|
by Tom
Valtin and Brian Vanneman
Sierra Club Wins An Emmy | Get
Noisy About Boise | Organic
Pedal Power | In Memory | Disenchanted | Real Red Rock Canyon Saved
Sierra
Club Wins An Emmy
On August 3, the National
Academy of Television Arts & Sciences honored
Sierra Club Productions’ first public television program, Ansel Adams:
A Documentary Film, with a News and Documentary Emmy award in the category of
Outstanding Cultural & Artistic Programming (long format).
Ansel Adams was nominated along with programs produced by ABC, CBS, and National
Geographic. "We are very proud to have been included in this outstanding
group of nominees," says Inness Wei Shadrick, Vice President of Sierra
Club Productions. "And to win exceeded our greatest expectations."
The documentary was co-produced with Steeplechase Films, written and directed
by Ric Burns, and produced by Burns and Marilyn Ness. Major funding was provided
by exclusive corporate donor Hewlett-Packard and additional funding was provided
by the Sierra Club Foundation and Rosalind P. Walter. The film first aired on
PBS on WGBH Boston’s "American Experience" and is now available
on home video and on DVD.
Get
Noisy About Boise
The Sierra
Student Coalition (SSC) celebrated Boise Cascade Corporation’s
September announcement that it would became the first major U.S. forest products
company to adopt a comprehensive environmental statement for its operations,
including a promise to eliminate the purchase of wood products from endangered
forests. "Today, Boise is sending the message that it is no longer acceptable
to supply the American marketplace with endangered forest products," says
Sequoia Nagamatsu, Forest Protection Coordinator for the SSC. "Young people
spoke and Boise listened. We hope other companies follow their lead."
For months, thousands of students across the country generated postcards at
local distribution centers, kicked Boise Cascade off their campuses, and educated
students and university officials about the company’s unsound environmental
practices. "Thousands of students across the country can pat themselves
on the back," says SSC Director Meighan Davis. "The forest products
industry has relied on logging pristine forests for too long. Boise’s
decision shows that there’s a better way."
Organic Pedal
Power
The journey of a thousand miles sometimes starts with a single pedal. It
did for nearly twenty bicyclists who, with the support of the Sierra
Club of Canada’s
Sierra Youth Coalition, set out on July 26 to travel from Vancouver, B.C.,
to Cancún, Mexico, for the World Trade Organization (WTO) conference.
(Their human-powered wheels were scheduled to take them as far as Tijuana,
where buses took over for the remainder.)
As they hugged the continent’s west coast, the bikers’ goal was
to meet with farmers, migrant workers, produce shoppers, and others to highlight
the effects of WTO agriculture policies on the food we consume. "It’s
better to support local organic farmers and buy fruit grown in the region,
and in season," says Geneva Guerin, who dreamed up the "Deconstructing
Dinner Caravan" last year. Guerin (pointing, above) and her colleagues
want to see trade rules that encourage local organic farming rather than
international agribusiness,
which they believe is environmentally destructive, energy intensive, and
subjects migrant workers to unfair labor conditions.
Their goal upon arrival at the beach resort-turned-finance center was to
make as many one-on-one connections with WTO delegates as possible and, says
Guerin, "share
the stories of our travels."
In
Memory
Longtime Club member and supporter Avis Goodwin of Santa Barbara, Calif.,
passed away in August at age 96. Goodwin was the lead funder for the Club’s
wolf introduction program in the Greater Yellowstone region, and she gave generously
to help educate the public in the northern Rockies—ranchers, farmers,
city folk, and visitors alike—to help change their attitudes and practices
toward wolves. In 2002 she followed these efforts with a substantial gift to
promote wolf restoration work in the southern Rockies, and she established
an endowment providing permanent funding to protect top predators. She believed
that if top predators were faring well, the entire habitat would be sound.
Disenchanted
Sally Baron of Stoughton, Wisconsin, a waitress, cook, factory worker, mother
of six, and wife of a coal miner who was injured on the job, had become increasingly
disenchanted with the president of late. When Baron passed away in August from
heart surgery complications, her obituary included the request that, "Memorials
in her honor can be made to any organization working for the removal of President
Bush." The Associated Press and MSNBC reported that dozens of people from
across the U.S. had contacted the local newspaper vowing to make donations,
and that her obit request had started attracting notice nationwide.
Meanwhile, Alan Locklear and Marie Valleroy of Portland, Ore., Sierra Club
members since 1981, sent a large contribution to the Club "to demonstrate
the depth of our support for your action" to defeat President Bush. "We
are not rich and Bush’s tax cuts have not helped us very much," the
couple wrote, "but we are very prosperous compared with most of the world
and with the poor in this country who have been getting the back of W’s
hand."
Real
Red Rock Canyon Saved
"
Truth is stranger than fiction," writes Southern Nevada Group Chair Karen
Hunt, who read "Explore, enjoy, and PROTECT" (on Sierra Club outings)
in the September issue of The Planet. As readers may recall, the article included
a photograph and caption referring to a fictitious Red Rock Canyon that had
been saved through activism inspired by Club outings. But it turns out a real
Red Rock Canyon was saved this year (though not the one pictured).
As part of a coalition of citizens and nature groups, the Club’s Southern
Nevada Group helped enact state and county regulations protecting the Red Rock
Canyon National Conservation Area, just west of Las Vegas. (Among other things,
the regs precluded a developer from building 5,500 homes proposed for the area.) "We
spoke at hearings, wrote to the papers, appeared on TV, gathered signatures
at rallies and county events, rode through a hail storm at a bike event wearing
Red Rock bumperstickers, and led a hike on which we were joined by a reporter
who then wrote an article about the area’s ‘breathtaking beauty,’" Hunt
says. "Outdoor Outreach [the Club’s new Conservation in Outings
program] is fun and effective!"
Up to Top
|
