At its July board meeting, the Sierra Club Board of
Directors endorsed Vice President Al Gore to be the next
president of the United States. The directors also passed a
new resolution in support of reforming campaign finance laws
and including serious third party candidates, like Ralph
Nader, in the presidential debates.
The Gore endorsement capped a six-month process in which
the Club surveyed all the chapters and thousands of volunteer
leaders. Thirty-nine chapters, representing 413,854 members,
favored a Gore endorsement; one chapter, with 3,006 members,
supported an endorsement for Nader.
Gore accepted the endorsement during an Aug. 21 speech to
Club members in Grand Rapids, Mich.
"I want to say how proud I am to be running with the Sierra
Club," Gore said. "I'm proud that from my earliest days in
Congress, I took on the big polluters to protect the
environment."
Introducing the vice president at a rally on the banks of
the Grand River, Sierra Club president Robbie Cox said that
Gore could be "the most pro-environment president in our
history."
"The Sierra Club endorses Vice President Gore," said Cox,
"because he is committed to cutting air and water pollution
and protecting our nation's treasured forests and wildlands.
As vice president, Al Gore helped strengthen clean air health
standards, sped cleanup of Superfund toxic-waste sites,
reduced automobile tailpipe pollution and protected America's
spectacular landscapes."
Cox added that Texas Gov. George W. Bush has said that if
elected, he would weaken toxic-waste cleanup standards, allow
oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and
increase logging in national forests.
Gore has pledged to end timber sales in wild, roadless
areas of our national forests and include Alaska's Tongass
National Forest in the administration's roadless initiative, a
stronger position than the U.S. Forest Service has advocated.
He has also proposed a plan to cut air pollution and global
warming emissions from power plants.
The Club directors recognized consumer-advocate Ralph Nader
for his strong record on globalization, trade agreements,
democracy and the environment, but emphasized the urgency of
defeating Bush.
"Our members looked at the positions, records and
experience of all the candidates," said Cox. "Al Gore is our
overwhelming choice."
The board voted to endorse the vice president with 12 in
favor, two against and one abstention.
The board emphasized that focusing on the current election
is not enough. In its resolution on cleaning up politics, the
board stated that "the single-round, winner-take-all political
process has problems. We support alternative electoral methods
that better reflect the diversity of public opinion. We need
to get big money out of politics by closing loopholes in
current campaign finance laws, establishing effective spending
limits, adopting public financing for Senate and Congressional
candidates." The Club specifically supported the free
television time proposal developed by the Alliance for Better
Campaigns.
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