Pirate's Cove

At one point the Sierra Club actually concerned itself with the environment. Clean water, air, land. Though always somewhat leftist, I supported them. Then they went full on climate cult and Woke

Huh what?

The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart.
The environmental group gave up its singular focus on climate change for a broader agenda. The ensuing internal strife left it weakened as it takes on the Trump administration.

The Sierra Club calls itself the “largest and most influential grass roots environmental organization in the country.” But it is in the middle of an implosion — left weakened, distracted and divided just as environmental protections are under assault by the Trump administration.

The group has lost 60 percent of the four million members and supporters it counted in 2019. It has held three rounds of employee layoffs since 2022, trying to climb out of a $40 million projected budget deficit.

Its political giving has also dropped. Federal campaign-finance records show $3.6 million in donations from the Sierra Club during the push to defeat Donald J. Trump in 2020, but none as Mr. Trump stormed back to the presidency in 2024.

They embraced climate doom while forgetting about real environmental issues. Most of the funds raised went into raising more funds, paying exorbitant salaries, and donating to Democrats, not helping the environment. Or even Doing Something about Hotcoldwetdry. Is it any wonder so many said “nah, I’m out”?

And this year, as the Trump administration returned better organized and better prepared than in its first term, the Sierra Club was the opposite. While Mr. Trump boosted coal power, canceled wind farms and rolled back pollution limits, the club was consumed by internal chaos, culminating when the board fired its executive director, Ben Jealous, a former president of the N.A.A.C.P.

Maybe shouldn’t have hired a stone cold activist, who’s never really worked a real job, and is all about playing the race card?

During Mr. Trump’s first term, when the Sierra Club was flush with donations, its leaders sought to expand far beyond environmentalism, embracing other progressive causes. Those included racial justice, labor rights, gay rights, immigrant rights and more. They stand by that shift today.

“As long as climate change and environmental protection are viewed as just being concerns for a limited group of elites, we lose,” Loren Blackford, the group’s new executive director, said in a statement. “We only win by building a powerful, diverse movement.”

Apparently not.

The downside, according to interviews with people involved with the group and a review of financial records and internal documents, was that the Sierra Club lost its focus, then its strength.

By 2022, the club had exhausted its finances and splintered its coalition.

It drove away longtime volunteers who loved the club’s single-minded defense of the environment, by asking them to fully embrace its pivot to the left. Some even felt they were investigated by the club for failing to go along. Many hard-core supporters felt the Sierra Club was casting aside the key to its success: It was an eclectic group of activists who had one, and sometimes only one, cause in common.

Oops.

The club hired Mr. Jealous, its first Black executive director, that year to stop that slide, but his tenure accelerated it as accusations of sexual harassment, bullying, and overspending piled up.

Oops. They decided to become Trump Derangement Syndrome 24/7, have the workers unionize, give them big raises, and go full Woketard

It issued an “equity language guide,” which warned employees to be cautious about using the words “vibrant” and “hardworking,” because they reinforced racist tropes. “Lame duck session” was out, because “lame” was offensive. Even “Americans” should be avoided, the guide said, because it excluded non-U. S. citizens.

After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the group called for defunding the police and providing reparations for slavery.

The club even turned on its own founder, John Muir, with Mr. Brune saying the environmental icon had used “deeply harmful racist stereotypes” in his writings about Native Americans and Black people in the 1860s.

I mean, I don’t know where to stop with the excerpts, because the Crazy keeps going and going, so, I’ll just stop here. You have to read it in full. Long piece.