Environmental Controversy: The Sierra Club And Environmental Protection

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The Sierra Club was one of the first environmental preservation organizations on Earth that succeeded in becoming a large scale influence. The Sierra Club is largest and oldest grassroots environmental interest group in the United States of America, currently boasting 1,300,000 supporters. The Sierra Club is very active in encouraging the general public to understand and care more about environmental preservation, vigorously lobbying politicians and governmental agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, to influence the passage of environmentally relevant laws and policies, and fighting to maintain the legislative gains the group has already made. The group is active in striking down proposed laws that are environmentally detrimental,…show more content…
Since the Sierra Club’s initial defeat in this matter it has been definitively proven that abundant supplies of extractable water could be obtained elsewhere, and in the end, as the Sierra Club had proclaimed, the principal resource the residents of San Francisco received from the dam’s creation was free water power, not water provisions. Currently, there are serious talks of removing the dam for these reasons. Despite the loss, the debate and the Sierra Club’s ideals were projected throughout the nation and were heard loud and clear. It significantly helped the public learn about and better understand the Sierra Club as an environmental interest group. It also shed light on the fact national forests, even though protected by law, were still threatened from detrimental alterations, and this helped prevent future cases of legal alteration with other national…show more content…
The environmentally disparaging plan was proposed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as part of the Colorado River Storage Project. Akin to the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley, the Sierra Club adamantly opposed the planned dam construction and immediately fought back. In this legislative battle the Sierra Club’s entrepreneur was David Brower, whom in 1952 became the Sierra Club’s first executive director. Brower, with the help of his extensive experience in publishing, released a short book titled This is Dinosaur, which effectively underlined the vast beauty and natural resources of Echo Park and Split Mountain. The book was filled with an abundance of descriptive information and striking photographs taken by Philip Hyde and Martin Litton, and was meant to be used as a tool to educate the general public of Echo Park and Split Mountain’s natural wonders, which a vast majority of the nation was wholly unaware
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