Sierra Club Board President Ramón Cruz Visits Florida Chapter
Ramón Cruz, president of the Sierra Club Board of Directors, recently visited Florida, where he connected with local Sierra Club groups, supported endorsed political candidates and spoke out about the threats of climate change and the need for environmental and social justice.
On Oct. 15, he participated in toxic tour of Hillsborough County and hosted a press conference with U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Tampa) and climate activists to call for equitable clean energy use. They discussed the problems with TECO Energy's recent proposal to raise rates for customers by 14%, in part to pay for converting a generating unit at the Big Bend power station from coal-burning to natural gas.
Cruz said that with today's technology, there is no excuse for utilities like TECO not to make the move toward cleaner energy.
"Florida is the epicenter of the climate crisis. It's so vulnerable and we have seen already people here, not only in terms of heat waves and powerful hurricanes, people live in fear, and especially the communities that we are in today, Progress Village, are very susceptible," said Cruz, who conducted part of the press conference in Spanish.
The next day, he and the Suncoast group gathered for a celebration with candidates Sierra Club had endorsed for the St. Petersburg municipal election, including mayoral candidate Ken Welch and City Council candidates Copley Gerdes, Lisset Hanewicz, Gina Driscoll and Richie Floyd — all of whom went on to win their races on Nov. 2. Welch will be St. Petersburg's first Black mayor, and Hanewicz the first Hispanic council member.
Cruz emphasized Sierra Club's commitment to the intersection of social justice and climate action when selecting endorsements."We can't think of protecting the environment without asking who are we are protecting it for," he said. "The environmental struggle, it's also a social justice struggle, a gender equity struggle — unless we deal with all of these issues, then we will really not get ahead of the game in dealing with the climate crisis."
During his visit, Cruz also spoke at a special event hosted by the Sarasota World Affairs Council at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, went sailing with staff and volunteers and attended a beach picnic at Fort De Soto Park with Sierra Club members from the Suncoast, Tampa Bay and Manatee/Sarasota groups.
Cruz, an environmental policy and advocacy expert, was elected board president in May 2020, becoming the first Latino to hold that position in the organization's history. The Sierra Club Board of Directors is democratically elected by the organization's membership and serves its 3.8 million members and supporters.
