Boy I didn't have to read very far to find something I really agree with.
Quote:
"We were getting members because we were doing things," Brower said before he died last year. "Our (strength) came from outings and trips -- getting people out..."
Today, there is a new approach -- junk mail and scare tactics.
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Combine that with the quotes from Muir and Thoreau before that and you have what is the real problem for us due to the Sierra Club and their other corporate buddies. Anyone who is donating to the Sierra Club now and supporting the things they do today really isn't going out to use public lands, they just want the image that they do, and want to be the hero of that image aka the environmentalist. Muir and Thoreau were visionary conservationists because they actually went out and did the stuff, which is totally unlike todays closeted freaks who would rather crack open their wallet, than throw on a pack and some shoes for a week and go rebuilt a foot trail.
In my mind the real Sierra club legacy, besides getting everyone to abdicate their land, will be that they will totally destroy what they think they are saving. Anyone who has actually been deep in the National Forests in the West knows what a tinderbox it all is. However you can't log out even the dead wood, then next the forest fire access roads are shut down and closed to OHV, the lack of use and maintenance makes them all but impasssable, you know what happens next, all of you are intimately familiar. If the Sierra Club philanthropist today were actually getting out to see this stuff they would be in horror of what their money is doing. But who knows, maybe they don't care, perhaps they're just giving for tax purposes.
As for the rednecks who tear the hell out of the land and establish a wilderness brewery and scream "I have rights!" Its primarily their own fault. However, why should they feel compelled to conserve the land when the Sierra Club and the federal government don't have a policy of conservation either? But everybody in the whole country is at fault for not establishing a culture of conservancy over the years. How do you do that now against corporations like the Sierra Club, well you probably can't since the burden now rests on shoulders and wallet of the few. I think part of the problem is that we don't *create* public lands anymore and when we do they are just there to "look at". No one gets it anymore, but unfortunately I don't think anyone ever will again, you need negative population growth and discovery of new open land that isn't spoken for. If people are going to donate to the Sierra Club then maybe my only option is to give money to Burt Rutan and hope for the best. Although, I just read an article in the past few days that some group of jerks thinks they own everything and wants to establish "conservation" areas on Mars to cut down on the space junk so we don't harm the microbes
Might as well stop space exploration period and all stay home and eat a bullet since we might hurt something.