What is the Sierra Club and what is its function?

Question

The catigory is Adventure Education Vocabulary

Answer 1

The Sierra Club is an American environmental organization founded on May 28, 1892 in San Francisco, California by the well-known conservationist John Muir, who became its first president. The Sierra Club has hundreds of thousands of members in chapters located throughout the United States, and is affiliated with Sierra Club of/du Canada.

Mission statement
Explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth.
Practice and promote the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources.
Educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment.
Use all lawful means to carry out these objectives.

Answer 2

Why am I hearing so much against the Sierra club, when it comes to people informing me that they are trying to lower standards of living of humanity as a whole, and cause gas prices, oil prices and influence costly decisions concerning taxation issues in Calif. Just what the heck are they really for and against in the larger scheme of things-by the way they throw Greenpiece at me also. Enlighten me and others to their broader stance as Americas stewards to natural problems here in the U.S. Just what specific issues do you feel they have no business addressing and they are involved with currently if any. Help me get a handle on this pros and cons. thank you.

Answer 3

The Sierra Club is an American environmental organization founded on May 28, 1892 in San Francisco, California by the well-known conservationist John Muir, who became its first president. The Sierra Club has hundreds of thousands of members in chapters located throughout the United States, and is affiliated with Sierra Club of/du Canada.The Sierra Club is governed by a fifteen-member volunteer Board of Directors. Each year, five directors are elected to three-year terms, with all Club members eligible to vote. A president is elected annually by the Board from among its members and receives a small stipend. The Executive Director runs the day-to-day operations of the group, and is a paid staff member. The current Executive Director is Carl Pope.

All Club members also belong to chapters (usually state-wide), and to local groups. National and local special interest sections, committees, and task forces address particular issue. Policies are set at the appropriate level, but on any issue the Club has only one policy.

In addition to the members who are active as volunteers, the Club has approximately 500 paid staff members. Most of them work at the national headquarters in San Francisco, California, but there are others in the lobbying office in Washington, D.C. and in numerous state and regional offices.

In September 2005, the Sierra Club held its first Sierra Summit in San Francisco. Approximately 1,000 volunteers from around the country, selected by their chapters and groups, were delegates; some nondelegate members also attended. There were seminars and exhibit presentations about current environmental issues and about techniques for more effectve activism. Prominent guest speakers included Al Gore; Bill Maher; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; and Arianna Huffington.
All members receive Sierra magazine, a monthly glossy magazine describing the Club's activities and spotlighting various environmental issues. All chapters publish a newsletter and/or schedule of activities, and many groups also publish a newsletter.During the 1990s, some Sierra Club members wanted to take the Club into the contentious field of immigration to the United States. The Club's position was that overpopulation was a significant factor in the degradation of the environment. Accordingly, the Club supported stabilizing and reducing U.S. and world population. Some members argued that, as a practical matter, U.S. population could not be stabilized, let alone reduced, at the then-current levels of immigration. They urged the Club to support immigration reduction. Other Sierrans, however, thought that the immigration issue was too far from the Club's core mission, and were also concerned that involvement would impair the organization's political ability to pursue its other objectives. The Board of Directors accepted this latter view, and voted, in 1996, that the Sierra Club would be neutral on issues of immigration.

The advocates of immigration reduction sought to reverse this decision by using the referendum provision of the Bylaws of the Sierra Club. They organized themselves as "SUSPS", a name originally derived from "Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization" (although that name is no longer used since the Sierra Club objected to infringing the Club's trademark in the term "Sierrans"). SUSPS and its allies gathered the necessary signatures to place the issue on the ballot in the Club's election in the spring of 1998. The Board's decision that the Club would take no position on immigration was upheld by the membership by a three-to-two margin, although SUSPS complained that the ballot had been structured in an unfair and confusing manner.
The controversy resurfaced when a group of three immigration reduction proponents ran in the 2004 steering committee elections, hoping to move the Club's position away from a neutral stance on immigration [3]. The battle grew heated, with accusations of unethical and possibly illegal behavior floated by both sides. A lawsuit was filed by the reduction proponents, but subsequently dropped. Groups outside of the Club became involved, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and MoveOn [4]. Finally, the reduction proponents won only 3% of the vote, and the controversy subsided.

Answer 4

The Sierra Club's members are more than 750,000 of your friends and neighbors. Inspired by nature, we work together to protect our communities and the planet. The Club is America's oldest, largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization.

Answer 5

It is a conservatist group that works to try to save endangerd species, trees, nature, the like. They are a little over the top though.