A Look Back at 2016

L to R: Deepwater Wind CEO Jeff Gryhowski, Aaron Mair, Senator Shelden Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, and (seated) U.S. Representative Jim Langevin of Rhode Island, at the site of the Block Island Wind Farm, which began operating in August.

The year now drawing to an end has been significant for a number of reasons—and I’m not just talking about the presidential election. August 29, 2016, marked the announcement and the acceptance of a new era of geological time, now known as the Anthropocene Epoch. This new scale of measuring planetary changes goes well beyond domestic politicians’ denial of facts anchored in evidence-based scientific analysis by the world’s leading scientists. It acknowledges the clear reality that human activities have had an impact on all of the planet’s ecosystems due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, the fossil fuel industry is using its government subsidies and profits to exploit a wave of income insecurity and dwindling coal-sector employment to reverse President Obama’s actions on climate change. It seeks to reshape our democracy through the successful voter suppression efforts that now usher in the climate-change-denying administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

My recap of 2016 begins with the high note of awareness sparked by the Sierra Club’s efforts to resist the influences and corrosive effects of the oil and gas industries to weaken our democracy so that no effective action or momentum in Congress or the White House could create a clean energy future. Secondly, I want to talk about how we now must recruit, grow, and engage our membership and activist base so that we can meet the challenges to the environment in every state at the local level.

Additionally, I want to reflect on what the Sierra Club must do to transform our organizational culture to reflect even more strongly our commitment to diversity and inclusion. We as a Club are doing some serious transformative environmental movement work, and this must be expanded and deepened if we wish to emulate the power of the diversity that we see in the natural world. It will take the collective work of all healthy human cultural ecosystems to root out the “isms” of intolerance, and the Sierra Club has begun the necessary work that will strengthen us at this critical moment. Now we need to quickly reflect on what we know, and what the Sierra Club needs to continue doing to transform the global conversation and spark a national mobilization against the institutional forces denying climate change for the sake of their shareholders.

Then as now, the Sierra Club hit the ground running by sending a powerful delegation of grassroots leaders and partners to the United Nations’ Paris COP21 session to influence global leaders to act immediately on climate. We strengthened our relationships with environmental activists from around the world to speak in one united voice calling for global action now against climate change. This historic global UN agreement put to rest the debate over mankind’s role in driving climate change and made 2016 a year of action.  The Sierra Club’s climate movement efforts help shape a vibrant national conversation on what we must do to transform our economy by shifting to 100 percent clean energy solutions that would be anchored in sustainable human development practices that would not deplete or degrade our environment. The Sierra Club supported President Obama’s “Clean Power Plan” by lobbying and supporting states in their efforts to end their dependence on coal and other dirty fuels by switching to wind and solar. The Clean Power Plan effort also helped the Club forge new partnerships with labor and unions calling for living-wage jobs and opportunities in the developing clean energy sector.

Our 2016 fight for clean energy and building a climate movement did not stop with labor partnerships and clean energy jobs; it also deepened the Club’s work with fenceline environmental justice communities like the residents of Detroit’s 42817 zip code, residents of Flint, Michigan, whose water supply was contaminated by lead, and members of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation whose water supply and sacred lands were threatened by the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Poor urban communities like Detroit’s 48217 still are dumping grounds for petroleum coke waste and coal-fired power plants that operate within blocks of neighborhood schools are examples of what happen in a pay to play anti-environmental regulation congress. The environmental crisis we are witnessing in Michigan should give all Americans pause.  For the first time in modern history we are seeing whole municipal populations have their community assets stripped away and liquidated for the benefit the highest corporate bidder without regard to the environmental or public health consequences.  Our new president and congressional leadership not only want to increase deregulation efforts; but also seek to eliminate the EPA.

The erosion of citizen democracy and the power of the vote was a consequence of national political gerrymandering that cut to the core of  civilian populations’ right to protection from corporate polluters. The Sierra Club has partnered with the NAACP, the faith community, labor, and civil rights and social justice organizations to collectively resist the power of one-political-party rule financed by corporations rooted in polluting fuel industries that flood our political system with big money. Unprecedented amounts are now spent in the form of campaign contributions for politicians who create laws and a regulatory framework to maximize shareholder donor value with subsidies and relaxed environmental protections.

Through our diversity and democracy efforts, the Sierra Club has become a trusted ally and environmental movement building advocate for some of our nation’s most oppressed, unprotected, and underserved communities. The benefit of being in these spaces is that we are also better able to learn, share, and spread diverse perspectives on how different cultures engage and enjoy the environment.

Amongst the many challenges of 2016, the Sierra Club never took it’s eye of our long-term efforts to build and inspire tomorrow's leaders now. The Sierra Club's Nearby Nature initiative helped make the following impact in seven cities (Phoenix, AZ; Washington, DC; Los Angeles, CA; Jackson, MS;  Erie, PA; Luquillo, PR; and East Chattanooga, TN.)  We activated 6,000+ individual volunteers to create and maintain trails focused on enhancing a nearby connection to nature in communities with limited outdoor spaces.   Along with other Sierra Club campaigns, programs and capacities, activated over 2500 participants through over 100 events to get youth outdoors to celebrate the Centennial of the National Park Service. We also brought celebrity power to the party. Brooklyn Decker, Nolan Gould, and Viggo Mortensen all shared important messages about our parks and the next 100 years of conservation in America.

The Sierra Club was the earliest supporter of President Obama's Every Kid in a Park initiative. Working with our partners in the Outdoors Alliance for Kids, we helped inspire over 40 “Every Kid in a Park” events reaching more than 20,000 fourth-graders with an outdoor experience. Organizer Roberto Morales with the Club’s Our Wild America campaign built the program into his work in Los Angeles and introduced dozens of fourth-graders to the San Gabriel Mountains in their backyard.

The Club led a national alliance to advance opportunities to get kids outdoors. Run by the Sierra Club, the Outdoors Alliance for Kids (OAK) includes nearly 100 national non-profits and businesses representing more than 60 million individuals. OAK is a leading voice in Washington, DC, for getting kids outdoors, and it co-hosted a major summit at the White House on continuing this important work into the next administration. These young conservation activists come from all walks of life and represent the diversity that is America and represent our long-term hope against efforts to roll back our 125-year conservation legacy. In short, investing in our youth and diversity plants seeds that will grow into tomorrow’s environmental leaders and conservation voters.

In closing, I must acknowledge one of the most environmentally consequential gifts President Obama has given to our nation and to posterity: banning oil drilling in large areas of both the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.  To date, President Obama has protected over four million acres of land—or a total of 265 million acres when you include ocean protections (mainly two expansions: the 782,000-square-mile Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, and the nearly 140,000-square-mile Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument). President Obama has protected more public lands than any other president in American history, and probably more than any other elected leader in history. And here is the kicker: Almost all of these 2016 actions by President Obama—undertaken to protect humanity, the environment, and our climate so that we can explore and enjoy the planet for generations to come—were facilitated in partnership with grassroots Sierra Club leaders and partners like you from around the country.

We of course acknowledge that there has been a sea change in our national leadership with regard to tackling climate change and protecting air, water and public lands. But what the incoming Trump administration fails to understand—and consistently underestimates—is our resilience as a grassroots environmental movement to faithfully defend our 125-year leadership and legacy.  We and the generation inspired by President Obama are the very seeds of hope and resilience. As the old saying goes, “They tried to bury us; but they didn’t know we were seeds.” So let us use this time to germinate a new diverse, inclusive, and powerful environmental movement that will enlist all humanity for a clean energy future.