Dan Chu is the executive director of the Sierra Club Foundation and the interim executive director of the Sierra Club. | Photo by Josh DeWare

We are living in a now-or-never moment. This next decade will be decisive in our efforts to address the climate crisis and the extinction emergency. We must make a major leap from an economy built on extraction and fossil fuels to a regenerative economy centered on clean energy, good jobs, and freedom from oppression. Failure is not an option: On our current trajectory, we will pass an average global temperature rise of 2.7°F (1.5°C) as early as 2030. If we blow past that threshold, we will experience deadlier hurricanes and wildfires, the loss of communities to sea level rise, and even more species extinctions. According to the World Health Organization, between 2030 and 2050 an additional 241,000 people per year will die from climate-related causes such as malnutrition, heat stress, and malaria.

The 2020s are our best opportunity to avert even more death and destruction—and the Sierra Club's new 2030 strategic framework provides a road map for ensuring that this opportunity doesn't slip away. It's a vision for the world the Sierra Club wants to conserve, protect, and create—a vision rooted in our values of antiracism, balance, collaboration, justice, and transformation. The framework will enable the Sierra Club's network of changemakers to organize with a shared purpose, grounded in shared values, so that we can make the most of the years between now and 2030.

Our 2030 framework includes five primary goals: By 2030, we will

• Protect 30 percent of US lands and waters
• Ensure that the 50 million people who currently don't have safe and easy access to the outdoors can exercise their right to experience nature
• Restore access to clean air and water, provide affordable clean energy, support family-sustaining jobs, and address inequities in the country's response to climate disruptions
• Address the climate crisis and transform our energy system by
  • Stopping the expansion of the oil and gas industry
  • Replacing fossil fuels with clean energy sources and electrifying the grid
  • Shifting trillions of public and private dollars from the fossil fuel economy to the renewable energy economy
• Build power by diversifying and expanding our base of members through our chapters, groups, and outings programs

The Sierra Club will embark on this work as it has always done: as a grassroots organization that depends on the efforts of people like you who are dedicated to making a better tomorrow for our families, our communities, and our planet. We will build power together through recruiting our friends and family to join us on outings that inculcate a love of nature, speaking out about environmental injustices, and holding our representatives accountable for acting on climate change.

You can witness this values-based collaboration in action today. In Nevada, for example, the Sierra Club and the Fort Mojave Tribe have generated significant support for getting Avi Kwa Ame, or Spirit Mountain, designated as a national monument. On Texas's Gulf Coast, we have worked with community partners to block the development of new fracked-gas export terminals in majority-Latino areas.

Together, we hold the power to advance climate solutions, be in solidarity with allies in the journey for environmental justice, restore the promise of our democracy, and protect our lands, water, air, and wildlife. Together, we will win the fight for a healthy climate built on a foundation of environmental, racial, economic, and gender justice. We will work toward a future in which all people benefit from a healthy, thriving planet and a direct connection to nature. Our new 2030 strategic framework lays out our path to getting there. I hope you'll join me on this journey to a brighter, more sustainable future.

This article appeared in the Summer 2022 quarterly edition with the headline "2030 Vision."