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< Restoring the Everglades: While the Club makes it a priority to defeat the myriad anti-environmental measures that keep popping up like prairie dogs, we are pushing a positive agenda as well. For example, the Club’s Wildlands Campaign is focusing on protecting six national treasures, including Florida’s Everglades—what the late conservationist Margorie Stoneham Douglas called a “river of grass.” We are fighting for an end to subsidies to the Florida sugar industry, which are among the biggest obstacles to restoring the Everglades. Douglas said the Everglades were a test. “If we pass, we get to keep the planet.” (JUNE 1995) |
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< Sneak Attacks: By summer, the Club and its allies have made major progress in sounding the alarm, waking up environment supporters, and mobilizing a counter-offensive. But the leaders of the 104th Congress don’t let up. When the Contract With America stalls, they take to back-door attacks, attaching anti-environmental riders to unrelated bills, and bait-and-switch ploys, where they call for reauthorizing the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act when they are actually slashing protections. They draw up a budget that assumes billions in revenue from oil and gas leases in the Arctic Refuge—never mind that in 1991, Congress rejected an attempt to open the refuge to drilling. Meanwhile, Club leaders fume when President Clinton reverses
his promise to veto a “salvage-logging” bill.
In August, Club |
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< War on Environment
DeLayed: “I’ll be straight with you,”
House Majority Whip Tom Delay tells the Wall Street Journal
early in 1996. “We have lost the debate on the environment.”
In the fall, the Republican leadership attaches dozens of anti-environmental
riders to budget bills, and twice the government is shut down
when President Clinton vetoes the bills. Gingrich caves. Public
opinion turns against the Republican leadership and they withdraw
15 of 17 riders. By spring, the tide turns. In April, more than
10,000 Sierra Club volunteers and staff in 100 cities hit the
streets, delivering doorhangers with the message “Protect
America’s Environment—For Our Families, For Our
Future.” Meanwhile, the Club begins ramping up efforts to forge alliances with community groups fighting environmental injustice in places like Pensacola, Florida, where arsenic- and dioxin-contaminated mud from a toxic dump site pours through the streets when it rains. (JUNE 1996) |
| JUNE 1996: Sierra Club moves headquarters to 85 Second Street in downtown San Francisco. | |
| SEPTEMBER 1996: Under the headline, “Seven Candidates Polluters Hate,” The Planet publishes photos and profiles of environmental champions we’ve endorsed, including one John Kerry, who is seeking re-election to the Senate. | |
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< Wild Utah: In
September 1996, two days after Clinton announces the creation
of the 1.7-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
in Utah, the Club’s board of directors endorses him for
president. While Club leaders do qualify their support for Clinton—he
supported NAFTA and a clearcut logging bill that the Club opposed—they
cite his leadership standing up to Gingrich and company’s
radical deregulatory agenda with vetoes of key bills. The new national monument in Utah comes after almost two decades of work by Club activists like Jim Catlin, Rudy Lukez, Lawson Legate, and Vicky Hoover, who not only pressed the public and elected officials for its protection, but went out to the land with compasses and pencils and helped map proposed wilderness areas. (NOVEMBER 1996) |
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< Limits on Smog and
Soot: When the EPA proposes new standards on soot and
smog, the National Association of Manufacturers creates a front
group called the Air Quality Standards Coalition that runs ads
saying tougher standards are unnecessary. One radio spot in
Chicago claims dust mites, not pollution, are to blame for asthma
outbreaks, and that new rules will cost Chicagoans $17 billion.
Richard Klimisch, an automobile industry spokesperson, says:
“The effects of ozone are not that serious....What we
are talking about is a temporary loss in lung function of 20
to 30 percent. That’s not really a health effect.”
(What if it was a temporary loss in profits of 20 to 30 percent?) Club activists clamor for strong standards, jamming EPA hearings in Chicago, Boston, Salt Lake City, and Durham, North Carolina. (MARCH 1997) |
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< Sprawl Hurts Us All: With Clinton’s re-election and the waning of Gingrich’s clout, the Club is able to devote more attention to local issues. The board of directors launches a new national priority campaign to stop sprawling development on the outskirts of cities and towns, protect open space, and restore and revitalize inner city areas. The Planet devotes a special four-page spread to this new campaign. (APRIL 1997)) |
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< No to NAFTA: The Clinton administration is working with Newt Gingrich to win fast-track authority from Congress to negotiate new trade rules like an expansion of NAFTA. The labor movement—with its message that one-sided pacts threaten jobs and wages—leads the opposition, but consistently cites environmental protection as a reason for opposing these bills. And the Club focuses its resources in key districts that make a difference. The president withdraws the bill when last-minute arm-twisting still can’t raise the necessary 218 votes to win. This marks the first time in 50 years that Congress turns back a major trade initiative. (DECEMBER 1997) |
| More perseverance, setbacks, and victories in 1998 and beyond... |
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