August 17, 2017
By Kate Bartholomew, Atlantic Chapter Conservation Chair
Once again, the Annual Meeting of the Sierra Club Council of Club Leaders is being held in conjunction with the National Sierra Club Board of Directors Annual Meeting in September, but not on the west coast. Instead of meeting at the National Headquarters in Oakland, California, this year the Club is taking the event to the nation’s capital. Who knows what will happen in DC in the course of five days?
What is certain to occur is that the Atlantic Chapter will introduce one CCL resolution as the primary author, and speak out in support of at least one more resolution as co-author. These resolutions, if approved by the CCL, will then go to the Sierra Club Board of Directors for action — referral to a committee or working group, approval, denial or back to the CCL.
The Sierra Club Nuclear Weapons Working Group wrote the first resolution, and the Atlantic Chapter CCL Delegate, also a member of the NWWG, agreed to present it to the Council of Club Leaders since the Atlantic Chapter approved it.
The Ohio and Michigan Chapters have also officially signed on as co-authors. The resolution reads:
The Council of Club Leaders requests that the Board of Directors facilitate a process for amending Sierra Club policy to state that the Sierra Club supports the United Nations legally binding instrument, The Draft Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, leading toward their total elimination.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that under this UN treaty, the United States would be a rogue, criminal state, something I’ll explore in more detail in another article.
The second resolution will be introduced by the Montana Chapter, with the Atlantic Chapter voicing support as a co-author. It tackles long-range goals concerning global temperature maximums, based on a paper published by James Hansen, et al., on July 14, 2017. Hansen and fellow scientists argue in the Abstract that only by setting a goal of returning to a global temperature increase of only .5 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial level will severe and catastrophic effects of the climate crisis be avoided. According to Hansen, the last time the world was this warm (1.2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level), sea levels were 6 to 9 meters higher than they are now — and that increase is already in process with the melting of Greenland and Antarctica.
Montana’s resolution asks the Council of Club Leaders and the Board of Directors to take the path of necessity rather than expediency:
The Council of Club Leaders requests the Board of Directors to establish .5 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial level as the Sierra Club’s long-term global-warming-limit temperature policy goal.
And this resolution will be put forward in that very “swamp” filled with climate change deniers who just recently “officially” back-pedaled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Perhaps we should contact Stephen Colbert to introduce this resolution. Depending on the rest of the week’s news, he might consider it a public service.