We are environmentalists, and current and former Sierra Club Members. The Montgomery County Sierra Club Executive Committee does NOT represent us.

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

²bethesdamagazine.com/bethesda-beat/politics/montgomery-county-sierra-club-endorses-blair-in-county-executive-race/

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