Sierra Club lobbyist Debbie Sease laments the lack of Theodore Roosevelt-style conservationist Republicans in the current Congress (HCN, 5/2/11). As one cause for that deficiency, she need look no further than her own organization.
Protection of the environment is historically a nonpartisan issue. All citizens want to breathe clean air and drink clean water. Unfortunately, the Sierra Club, under the leadership of former executive director Carl Pope, made a disastrous decision some years ago to align environmental activism with social justice and other left-wing, liberal causes. Some of these causes have validity. But I don’t get involved except as an individual. I don’t try to entangle conservation groups that I might happen to belong to. Other environmental groups followed Mr. Pope’s misstep in forgetting the nonpartisan nature of environmental protection.
I was a Sierra Club member for 30 years, ending in 2003. I don’t feel that I left the Sierra Club. Rather, as a conservative Republican who is a conservationist and who advocates for protection of wildlife and protection of public lands, the Sierra Club left me years before.
Steve Bonowski
Lakewood, Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Partisan missteps.
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