Sierra Club: We'll fight on the ground

The Sierra Club will lose friends on Capitol Hill but gain hordes of new members after votes get counted in next Tuesday's mid-term elections, or such will be the case if predictions of a Republican sweep hold true.

Enemies in high places are a prime grassroots organizing tool. Before he was booted out of President Reagan's cabinet, anti-environmental ("I don't like to paddle and I don't like to walk") Interior Secretary James Watt helped boost Sierra Club membership from 179,000 to 350,000.

But Michael Brune, new executive director of the nation's best-known "green" group, doe not welcome the tradeoff.

"It's not a scenario we're looking forward to with any enthusiasm . . . We would rather see people join the Sierra Club for such positive reasons as the opportunity for a breakthrough on clean energy and wilderness protection," Brune said over lunch Tuesday on a Seattle visit.

The Sierra Club and other activist groups are seeking to counter the corporate financed "air war" on TV -- Republican aligned groups have a three-to-one spending advantage in 2010 -- with a ground game.

"We're not going to out-raise Chevron or Massey Energy or other companies, but we can outsmart them and out-organize them and get people to the polls," Brune said.

The environment has come to be a "Third Rail" of politics especially on the West Coast. Three Washington politicians made greens' national "Dirty Dozen" list of politicians in 1998 and 2000: All three lost, most prominently GOP Sen. Slade Gorton.

Joel Connelly has been a staff columnist for more than 30 years. He comments regularly on politics and public policy. Joel Connelly has been a staff columnist for more than 30 years. He comments regularly on politics and public policy.

But anti-environmental rhetoric is heard on the hustings these days. Sen. John McCain preached "cap and trade" legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during a spring 2008 tour of Washington and Oregon. Now, he and 2008 running mate Sarah Palin call it "cap and tax."

The Republicans' 2nd District House nominee, John Koster, is an outspoken climate skeptic. In a recent King5 News interview, 3rd District nominee Jaime Herrera was "not convinced on climate change that humans are to blame."

At a Snohomish County Liberty Action Committee speech in June, Koster held forth:

"Um, you know they want to do this ridiculous cap-and-trade based on . . . that's just nonsense. Um, do I believe in climate change? Yes, it's been changing since the good Lord created the Earth and it's going to continue to change. Do I believe man had anything to do with it? No, absolutely not!"

Such rhetoric is the stuff of Tea Party-backed candidates this year. Colorado's GOP Senate nominee Ken Buck has described global warming as a "hoax." Wisconsin Senate candidate Ron Johnson has blamed climate change on Sunspots.

Sharron Angle, the Tea Party champion running for Senate in Nevada, wants to abolish the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencay. In Kentucky, Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul touts the controversial mining technique of blowing the tops of mountains.

An old adage goes that there's nothing like a hanging in the morning to focus the mind. Brune and Seattle-based Sierra Club executive Bill Arthur are detecting that previously turned-off "green voters" are tuning in as the election gets closer.

"There have been, particularly a couple months ago, people frustrated that we had Obama in the White House and Democratic majorities in Congress, and somehow we couldn't deliver a strong climate bill," Brune said.

Environmentalism used to be a bi-partisan cause around here.

Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican president, designated an Olympic National Monument more than a century ago. It was expanded and shaped into a national park by his distant Democratic cousin, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

GOP Gov. Dan Evans was crucial to creation of the North Cascades National Park (1968) and Alpine Lakes Wilderness (1976). As Republican senators, Evans and future green target Gorton pushed through a million-acre 1984 Washington Wilderness Bill.

President Reagan signed the Washington bill into law, and the Oregon Wilderness Bill, and legislation to create the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Area and the the Mount St. Helens National Scenic Area.

No more. The Gipper would probably be labeled a RINO (Republican in Name Only) by Tea Party and property rights activists were he alive and running today.

The Republicans' Senate nominee Dino Rossi is zeroing in on "cap and trade." Jaime Herrera repeatedly blasts the EPA in her 3rd District campaign and is backed by the billionaire Koch Brothers, chief financiers of "astroturf" grass roots groups fighting climate change legislation.

Only one local Republican -- Rep. Dave Reichert -- breaks the mold. Reichert was one of just 8 GOP House members to back climate/energy legislation, and has joined with Sen. Patty Murray in legislation to grow the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. He is backed by the League of Conservation Voters.

The Sierra Club soldiers on. It is putting staff into 32 races around the country. The list includes the reelection races of Murray and Rep. Rick Larsen in the 2nd District, and Democrat Denny Heck who is running against Larsen in the 3rd.

The club figures it can sway and energize 1.4 million people, 620,000 members and the rest persons who have, in Brune's words, "done something in the past year to support the work of the club."

What's really at stake? Not just seats in Congress, but the state of the planet . . . The climate debate translates to dying forests in national parks. A shrinking of winter snowpack that supplies water (and sustains power, agriculture and fish) in Northwest and Rocky Mountain rivers. Melting permafrost in the Arctic, and release of methane into the atmosphere. Rising ocean levels.

As well, while the United States dallies, China thrusts itself into world preeminence in solar, wind and new energy technologies.

It's kind of curious. By boosting climate legislation, the Sierra Club is promoting innovation, technological breakthroughs, and a new energy economy in the United States.

By defending Big Oil and Big Coal, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is bolstering a new energy economy -- in China.