May 2022
In 2002, The Montgomery County Sierra Club (SC) Executive Committee (Ex-Comm) endorsed Green Party candidate Linda Schade1 for State Delegate because of her opposition to the Intercounty Connector (ICC) highway and to subsidizing fossil fuel infrastructure.
Twenty years later, the Ex-Comm endorsed two pro-fossil fuel infrastructure candidates: wealthy multi-millionaire David Blair for County Executive, and a Chamber of Commerce CEO, Marilyn Balcombe for County Council2.
From 2002 through 2011, the SC battled alongside citizen activists to stop the fossil-fuel infrastructure -the ICC- using their resources --including legal help-- in coordination with their anti-fossil-fuel infrastructure coalition partners, to fight it.3,4
In the midst of the pandemic (2020-2021), the SC Ex-Comm worked with the Industrial Solar complex who wanted to open up Montgomery County’s Agricultural Reserve for non-agricultural use, and opposed pro-solar citizens who insist on keeping the Reserve reserved for food, fiber and forest production (all which sequester carbon), and who want solar cells on existing roofs and parking lots.
When David Brower left the Sierra Club Board in 2000, one of the reasons he gave, according the New York Times, was that “the board's practice of meeting in closed session indicated how far it had strayed from its populist roots."5 The Montgomery County SC Ex-Comm should always directly involve the membership in deciding whom to endorse. (There are apps for that.) The Ex-Comm did not consult with its members in deciding to endorse candidates who support building climate-wrecking highway projects. This is not what democracy looks like.
Albert Einstein noted that “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Industrial complexes’ extractive business plans got us into the plethora of problems –inequality, pollution, climate disruption, and so on– that plague us now. Believing that working with Industrial complexes’ extractive business plans is going to get us out of our problems is what Einstein called the definition of insanity.
We call on the Montgomery County Sierra Club Ex-Comm to rescind its endorsements of pro-highway candidates.
Signatories
* Current Sierra Club members
** Lifetime Sierra Club members
† Former Sierra Club members
Ginny Barnes†
Ken Bawer*
Diane Cameron*
Steve Corbett †
Susan Eisendrath*
Jean S. Findlay*
Bob Guldin*
Jim Hall
Molly Hauck*
Brian Higgins
Joseph Horgan*
Susan Janney
Elizabeth Joyce
David Kathan†
Dan Kulpinski*
Joe Libertelli*
Caren Madsen
Jim Mole
Sarah Morse
Joyce E. Nalewajk
Mary Reardon†
Suzan Richman
Kathleen Samiy
Margaret Shoap
Blair Turner
Margaret Turner
Coletta Youngers
1web.archive.org/web/20021208103724/http://www.lindaschade.org/endorsements/index.html
3www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1430580/audubon-naturalist-soc-v-us-dept-of-transp/
4web.archive.org/web/20021214121221/http://maryland.sierraclub.org/montgomery/
swww.nytimes.com/2000/05/20/us/environmental-leader-quits-sierra-board.html