Sierra Club | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

The Sierra Club is one of the leading non-governmental organizations that influence science, technology, and ethics relations from the environmental perspective.

The oldest environmental organization in the United States, the Sierra Club was founded in 1892 by a Scotsman, John Muir (1838–1914), who did not become a U.S. citizen until 1903. By 1892, however, he was already known to presidents and writers (including Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) as one of the country's most passionate advocates for the protection of wilderness.

Muir arrived in San Francisco, California, from Wisconsin in 1868 and headed to Yosemite Valley in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which the avid outdoorsman had read about in a magazine. He spent the next seven years there, exploring, collecting plants, writing about his discoveries, and urging others to visit the high country. Those writings helped convince President Benjamin Harrison to create the Yosemite National Park in 1890.

In 1892 Muir became the first president of The Sierra Club, an association whose purpose as listed in its Articles of Incorporation was "To explore, enjoy, and render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast; to publish authentic information concerning them; and to enlist the support and cooperation of the people and government in preserving the forests and other natural features of the Sierra Nevada Mountains."

The Sierra Club-sponsored hiking and camping outings, called High Trips, that were fun but also meant to make members aware of and articulate about the preservation challenges facing the Sierra Nevadas. The education of such activists was important, for almost as soon as Yosemite National Park was established, efforts began to shrink it, strip it of federal protection, build a private railroad through it, and drown its beautiful Hetch Hetchy Valley behind a dam.

The park was shrunk and the proposal to build the dam passed in 1913, but all these fights—and especially the tragedy of the Hetch Hetchy defeat—helped transform the Sierra Club from a politically naive hiking club into a formidable and politically astute environmental organization. Its leaders now understood how the government worked and how important it was to win over public opinion to its causes. Outings and conservation were still integral to the Sierra Club, but so was political clout.

In the early twenty-first century, the Sierra Club is headquartered in San Francisco. With more than 750,000 members, it has lobbyists in Washington, DC, and a nationwide volunteer grassroots network striving to influence public policy on a variety of environmental issues.

Over the years, the club focus widened as environmental threats increased. Air and water pollution, urban sprawl, unsustainable logging, and the promotion of renewable energy—in addition to the protection of wilderness areas such as those in Yosemite—have emerged as some of the organization's top priorities. In recent years scientific pursuits in the areas of biotechnology—particularly as this new science relates to genetically modified organisms in agriculture and forestry—have been challenged by the club.

With regard to genetically engineered organisms, the club subscribes to a hard version of the Precautionary Principle and calls for a moratorium on the planting of all genetically engineered crops and the release of all genetically engineered organisms (GEOs) into the environment. It urges that where there are safer alternatives to the use of GEOs, these technologies should be given preference. On this topic the Sierra Club represents citizen science in action. Its biotechnology committee is all-volunteer. Some of its members are scientists but others are merely concerned citizens, worried about an unproven technology, who have researched the issue and feel compelled to act. Sierra Club committees make recommendations to the board of directors, which then formulates the club's official stand.

In the areas of energy conservation and renewables, the Sierra Club advocates for public transportation systems, energy efficient buildings and fuel efficient automobiles, and the use of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal power. The club has urged the U.S. Congress to provide for the expenditure of at least 2 billion dollars per year for at least five years for federal research and development—with emphasis on geothermal, solar, and fusion power; energy conservation and more efficient utilization of energy; and stripmining reclamation. In 2001, when the U.S. government announced an energy plan that privileged oil, gas, and nuclear power interests, the Sierra Club sued to gain access to Vice President Dick Cheney's notes of meetings in which the energy policy was developed.

Following founder John Muir's statement that "Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike" (Muir 1912, p. 260), the Sierra Club has made an effort to broaden its preservation ethic to include what have come to be called environmental justice issues. Whether it is the threat to the Gwichin people's subsistence hunting from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or dioxin-spewing power plants in poor neighborhoods of Detroit or San Francisco, the Sierra Club attempts to reach out to communities not usually associated with the environmental movement and assist them in their struggles.

In the early 2000s the Sierra Club continues to promote outings, where hikers can explore and enjoy the wild places of the earth. But in a political and corporate environment that increasingly compromises the quality of water, air, and soil in pursuit of economic gain, organizations such as the Sierra Club have become essential advocates for the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources. The Sierra Club's catalog of coffee table nature books and environmental literature can be accessed at http://www.sierraclub.org/books.

Alternative Energy;; Deforestation and Desertification;; Ecological Restoration;; Ecology;; Environmental Ethics;; Environmental Justice;; Environmentalism;; Genetically Modified Foods;; Nature;; Nongovernmental Organizations;; Rain Forest;; Sustainability and Sustainable Development;; Water.

Muir, John. (1912). The Yosemite. New York: Century.

Turner, Tom. (1991). The Sierra Club: 100 Years of Protecting Nature. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with the Sierra Club.

Sierra Club. Home page at http://www.sierraclub.org.

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