The Green movement will not stand or fall on whether Sierra prints its calendars on recycled paper, which is as much a badge of political correctness as it is of environmental responsibility. (Sierra’s paper, in fact, comes from trees grown on timber farms.) But it is emblematic of what Betty Ball, an ex-official of a local Sierra chapter, calls “a great schism between grassroots activists and the leadership of the mainstream environmental groups.”
On one level it’s a schism over style. Lobbyists for the large national organizations-the Group of 10*-roam Gucci Gulch with the rest of the Capitol Hill special-interest crowd. The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and the Audubon Society have welcomed onto their boards officials from Waste Management Inc., which has racked up millions of dollars in fines for violating environmental laws at its incinerators. NWF, Audubon, Sierra and others in the Big 10 pay their presidents six-figure salaries and run fund-raising operations that would do a presidential campaign committee proud. According to a new report by the National Charities Information Bureau, upwards of one fifth of the funds raised by at least six of the 10 biggest groups is plowed right back into more fund raising; in some cases less than two thirds of the budget goes for “programs”-the lawsuits, research and other activities that members believe they’re supporting. In contrast, Rest the West, a smaller group that fights cattle grazing on battered public lands, puts 90 cents of every dollar into the struggle, not the trappings.
The deeper conflict involves substance. Grass-roots groups accuse the nationals of being too quick to bend their principles in order to get a bill passed. “It’s the ‘Compromise First!’ mentality,” says David Orr, who in 1991 founded the dissident Association of Sierra Club Members for Environmental Ethics. While not denying the occasional need for compromise, the grass-roots groups are livid that the compromises originate with the environmentalists. Some of the perceived sellouts:
Last year Sierra negotiated with timber companies to produce a forestry bill regulating private lands in California. But the accord would have allowed half the ancient forests to be cut every 25 years. “They gave away the candy store,” says Stephanie Tebbutt of the Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance. (Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed it, and Sierra has subsequently come out against an even weaker bill.) But Sierra has yet to take a stand against clear-cutting in national forests, which threatens endangered as well as commercial species such as salmon, and isn’t even profitable: timber sales have required $550 million in taxpayer subsidies over the last two years. The Native Forest Council, founded by Tim Hermach in 1988, stepped into the gap. It is pushing legislation that would ban logging in federal forests but would also assist timber towns hurt by the ban. Bigger groups (with the notable exception of Greenpeace) aren’t interested in a bill they say would never pass Congress.
Last fall Montana-based Swan View Coalition won an injunction against grizzly-bear hunting in the state. The Group of 10 didn’t get involved.
Rest the West cites research suggesting that 80 percent of cattle on public lands should be removed until the overgrazed areas recover. The big national groups are just pushing for higher grazing fees.
Last month Jasper Carlton of the Biodiversity Legal Foundation in Boulder, Colo., with other grass-roots activists, filed a lawsuit challenging the federal moratorium on listing endangered species. The Big 10 worry that Congress is about to gut the Endangered Species Act, and so “are not willing to take the political heat” from such a bold suit, says Carlton. And although the best way to protect species is by preserving habitat - which doesn’t stop at state boundaries - the Goliaths settle for the state-by-state approach that Congress prefers. The Davids want to protect whole ecosystems, which most of the Big 10 insist Congress will never buy.
The established environmental groups deny that they sell out. “Our principles haven’t changed,” says Michael Fischer, executive director of the Sierra Club. They argue that good salaries attract environmental lawyers smart enough to go head to head with industry, and that fund raising is crucial to strengthening the movement through ecological research and public education. The small groups " have taken a good-faith difference of opinion and transformed it into some kind of holy war against the national groups that is unjustified," says David Edelson of the Natural Resources Defense Council. It’s too early to tell whether the battle over who is greener-than-thou will leave the environmental movement stronger or limping, but James Watt must love it. *Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon Society, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Wilderness Society, Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace, Ducks Unlimited, World Wildlife Fund.
