[insider] July 15) Building Connections, Big Win for Grizzlies, Wi-Fi in the Wilderness, Canceled Pipelines...[more]


Rincon Group / Our Blogs / Sierra Club's "Insider" Newsletter. . .



 

| Article |

Building Connections, Building Collective Power

Organizing manager Jocelyn L. Travis shares what she’s learned from setting up community dialogues across Cleveland, where she lives. “In my more than 40 years of community organizing, I’ve seen leaders crash when they didn’t listen to the people they served and I’ve seen ‘solutions’ burn when they weren’t influenced by the people they affected,” she writes.

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Jocelyn Travis at a 2018 press conference in support of establishing a 100 percent clean energy goal in Cleveland. Photo by Chad Stephens
"Here’s the thing: People know what they need. They just need to be heard."

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Photo courtesy of © C Thomas Hoff Photography
| Victory |

Big Win for Yellowstone Grizzlies

Last week, the US Appeals Court of the Ninth Circuit ordered Endangered Species Act protections reinstated for Yellowstone grizzlies, effectively halting planned trophy hunts in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. “We’re thrilled with the court’s decision,” said Bonnie Rice of the Sierra Club's Our Wild America Campaign.

This is no time to remove protections that help keep Yellowstone’s grizzlies on the road to recovery.


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Photo by Alejandro Prieto
| En Español |

Monumental Failure

Donald Trump has authorized the government to arrest anyone who destroys a monument on federal land and punish them with up to 10 years in prison. Yet, his administration has devastated national monuments like Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante, which he slashed by two million acres to make way for drilling.

"But when it comes to destroying, nothing tops the devastation of his medieval border wall," writes Sierra Club columnist Javier Sierra.

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Photo by Roger Minick
| Sierra Magazine |

Geography of Reconciliation?

In June of 1864, with the Civil War still raging, Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Yosemite Park Act, the first landscape-scale public park in history. Now, with the United States mired in another dark hour, we are once again a house divided. But public lands preservation and recreation are among the few political issues that still enjoy bipartisan support.

Can our public lands help bring together a splintered nation?


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Photo by Riccardo Savi via AP Images
| Sierra Magazine |

Grassroots Determination Derails Pipeline Plans

In a major setback for the Trump administration, the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline was canceled and the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines were shut down after years of sustained grassroots pressure from Tribal and environmental activists. “There hasn’t been a day in the last six years that I haven’t tried to stop this project,” says Chad Oba of Union Hill, Virginia, a historically Black community that spoke with one voice in opposing the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

The trifecta of decisions represents one of the biggest victories yet of the movement against fossil fuels.


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Christopher Basaldú, PhD, a Carrizo/Comecrudo tribal member and a Sierra Club organizing manager based in Brownsville, Texas. | Photo by Lori Simmons
| Article |

Connecting the Dots

The Trump administration and its fossil fuel allies are hell-bent on fracking for gas in West Texas and transporting it via pipeline to three huge export terminals they plan to build on the Gulf of Mexico. The project would defile the ancestral homelands of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, who convened a virtual human rights tribunal to connect the dots between petrochemical development, violence against Indigenous women, border militarization, and migration.

Now the Sierra Club and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe have teamed up to halt these fracked gas projects and stop Trump’s border wall in its tracks.


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Illustration by Eugenia Loli
| Sierra Magazine |

Should There Be Wi-Fi in the Wilderness?

The National Park Service is racing to expand cell phone service at parks nationwide. But do we really want a connected wild?

Learn more about the debate underway about connecting the outdoors.


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Illustration by Jon Stitch
| Sierra Magazine |

“Freaking Awesome”

Melba Ayala of San Juan, Puerto Rico, was watching the news one day when the meteorologist mentioned that for anyone interested in leading tours to beautiful places, there was a club training people to just that. “It was the first training for Sierra Club Outings leaders in Puerto Rico,” she says. “I was 17, and I had no idea what type of outing I wanted to do.” Fifteen years later, Ayala owns her own eco-tour business, she’s an interpreter with the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico, and she still leads Sierra Club Outings.

“I just enjoy nature,” she says. “It's so freaking awesome.”


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Photo by Jimmy O'Dea
| Article |

Smart Truckin’

On June 25, following six hours of overwhelmingly supportive public testimony, the California Air Resources Board unanimously passed the Advanced Clean Trucks rule. The first-in-the-nation rule requires manufacturers to produce medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks, with a goal of putting 300,000 of them on the road by 2035 and achieving a full transition from diesel to zero-emission vehicles by 2045. “This victory for clean air and environmental justice has been three-and-a-half years in the making,” says Katherine Garcia of Sierra Club California.

”But it almost ended in failure last December.”

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Illustration by Eugenia Loli
| Sierra Magazine |

Welcome to the Great Outdoors' Insta-Sphere

Sierra editor Katie O’Reilly was out hiking when her friend gasped, grabbed her arm, and pointed out a Gila monster lurking in the bush. But O’Reilly doesn't have a clear memory of it because she was busy trying to capture the moment on her cell.

So she recently challenged herself to a phone-free hike on a familiar trail.


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Get your quote today! | Photo courtesy of SunPower
| Business Partnership | SunPower |

Powering Change

Our partner SunPower’s mission is about changing our world for the better, and the company also helps power equitable access to clean energy. For more than a decade, SunPower has partnered with Grid Alternatives, working to make solar affordable and more accessible to communities of color and low-income people. If you're also thinking of going solar, check out SunPower—in addition, you'll get a $1,000 rebate and $1,000 will go to the Sierra Club in the process.

Get your free quote.

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Photo by Frank J Wicker—Getty Images
| National Outings |

Outings Update

The Sierra Club has canceled all outdoor activities through August 31, 2020, to protect our participants, staff, leaders, and partners. Event and activity planning is being continually reassessed as the situation progresses and demands. In addition, all Sierra Club Outings trips have been canceled through September 30, 2020. We hope that you and your loved ones are staying healthy and safe, and we can't wait to get back outdoors with you when this passes.

For more, please read our COVID-19 Travel Update.

Take action!
Photo by iStockphoto.com/flySnow
| Take Action |

Pass the HEROES Act

It's been two months since the House of Representatives passed a second major relief bill, the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, but the GOP-controlled Senate has yet to act on it. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc: Millions remain unemployed, state and local governments are at the financial breaking point, voting access is threatened, and people of color continue to disproportionately shoulder the burden.

Tell your senators to pass the HEROES Act now!

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Photo by iStockphoto.com/CREATISTA
| Environmental Law Program |

A String of Legal Victories

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that President Trump’s attempt to transfer $2.5 billion in military pay and pension funds for border wall construction is unlawful. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated one of the Pruitt EPA’s worst Clean Air Act policy reversals. Duke Energy and Dominion Energy announced they’re cancelling construction of their 600-mile-long Atlantic Coast Pipeline. A federal judge ordered that the Dakota Access pipeline be shut down and emptied of oil by August 5. The Supreme Court declined a request from TC Energy and the Trump administration to allow Keystone XL to proceed.

Get the details.

Rincon Group / Our Blogs / Sierra Club's "Insider" Newsletter. . .



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