News
Sierra Club: new leader and increased focus on mountaintop removal
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Mike Brune will soon become the Executive Director of the Sierra Club. Besides being a great leader, Mike brings another important thing to the table: an understanding and dislike for the ills of the coal industry, especially mountaintop removal coal mining. We just loved this line:
Also at the top of Brune’s first-year hit list is bringing an end to the coal industry’s “mountaintop removal” mining practices.
Here are excerpts from an article written by the Sacramento Bee:
MICHAEL A. JONES / mjones@sacbee.com
Michael Brune will become the sixth executive director in the Sierra Club’s history on March 15.Brune, 38, takes over the reins of the organization that famed conservationist John Muir started in 1892 at a time when the club, according to some observers, has lost some of the sting in the political punches it throws.
When Brune starts on March 15, he will replace veteran Executive Director Carl Pope, who will stay on in the new role of executive chairman.
But it is exactly Brune’s civil but edgy activist style – combined with his impressive string of victories against corporate environmental wrongdoing while at the Rainforest Action Network – that Sierra Club leaders said they found most appealing.
“The board was particularly impressed by Michael’s (proven) talent for bending the will of powerful adversaries without breaking the bonds of civility that keep them at the table,” board President Allison Chin said.
Brune, married with two small children, says his arrival doesn’t signal that a sea change is about to occur within the 1.4 million-member organization.
He noted that the club, along with its virtual army of Washington, D.C.-based lawyers and lobbyists, has a proud history of originating or heavily influencing most if not all of the nation’s major environmental statutes.
Author of the well-received Sierra Club 1988 book, “Coming Clean – Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal,” Brune did say he plans to redouble the Sierra Club’s efforts in the fight against global climate change. He said the club will push aggressively to get a clean-energy bill out of Congress before the end of 2010.
At the heart of that struggle, Brune says, lies America’s continued dependence on coal-fired electricity plants – plants which currently provide an estimated 45 percent of the nation’s energy but which are a major sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
Also at the top of Brune’s first-year hit list is bringing an end to the coal industry’s “mountaintop removal” mining practices.
Mountaintop removal, which occurs mostly in the Appalachian states, involves using an explosive charge to remove the top 300 or 400 feet of a mountain to expose a seam of coal for mining.
While federal regulations require mining companies to replace the top layer of dirt, the process destroys environmental habitat and releases toxins into the air that threaten the health of workers and local residents.
“We must replace dirty coal in this country,” Brune said. “We must continue this fight until we convince our political and industry leaders that there are more economic benefits to be had by transitioning to wind power and other forms of clean energy.”
