Charting an Ideal Future

Carl Pope: "What we're doing is very, very hard. But if not us, who? If not now, when?"
Photo by John Byrne Barry

by Tom Valtin
Direction Setting

The Sierra Summit opened this afternoon with a direction-setting session attended by some 700 Club delegates representing all 64 Club chapters. Two professional facilitators M.C.’d the session, outlining the goals of the direction-setting process and how they would be accomplished over the next three days.

To start, delegates were asked to write their name and Club affiliation on index cards, with a short sentence on the other side outlining their hopes for the Club. They then exchanged cards with someone at an adjacent table in order to "mix it up" and share those aspirations with people from other parts of the country.

A demographic snapshot of the room was taken using handheld electronic keypads. Each delegate entered a number in response to a list of questions, for example what region of the country they lived in, their age, and how easy they found it to spread the Club’s message where they lived. (Roughly 30 percent said it was difficult; less than 20 percent reported that it was easy.)

Club organizational-effectiveness guru Greg Casini spoke on the need to galvanize the Sierra Club and communities across America in support of an environmental vision that would be largely articulated here at the Summit. He was followed by Club Executive Director Carl Pope, who sported a cast due to an Achilles-heel injury sustained during a recent trip to Uzbekistan. Pope stressed the importance of protecting "this little spaceship we share," and alluded to the "moral failure" of national leadership in responding to Hurricane Katrina.

Several excercises ensued, including an "Ideal Future" exercise to ascertain what delegates would like to see happening around the country in 2020. Among the responses:

"Trade agreements like NAFTA dissolved"

"Less transport of goods"

"A growing middle class"

"The president a Sierra Club member."

Club President Lisa Renstrom took the podium, acknowledging those who had come from the Gulf Coast (eliciting a standing ovation) and announcing the formation of a Sierra Club fund to help rebuild communities in that region more sustainably. She then spoke about the emerging "third wave" of the environmental movement: enlisting humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environments -- and using all lawful means to carry out those objectives.

"The consciousness of America is a river that’s been dammed," she said. "We have to set it free."

-- 09/08/2005 Thu
8pm

Theming at the Summit
Mark Bettinger 09/08/2005 Thu 8pm

Voting with Garage-Door Openers
John Byrne Barry 09/08/2005 Thu 6pm