Political Shades of Green Clash

The bitter wrangle over immigration now threatening to topple the leadership of the Sierra Club has exposed a rift in the nation’s environmental movement itself and placed prominent conservationists, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, a founder of Earth Day, in opposing camps.

At the dawn of the modern environmental movement four decades ago, conservationists widely embraced the goal of global population control. They still do. But as they confront the prospect of a 50% increase in the U.S. population by mid-century -- mostly composed of immigrants and their children -- they are bitterly divided over whether to call for immigration restrictions.

On one side of the debate are Nelson and former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, who argue that it’s not enough for environmentalists to support worldwide population stabilization. They believe the United States needs to set an example by stabilizing its own population -- in part, by taking a strong stand against the flood of newcomers.

On the other side, movement leaders, including Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope and Kennedy, head of Waterkeeper Alliance, say taking a stand against immigration risks alienating Latino and Asian immigrants who may represent the future of conservation.

Pope says that, although a global effort to control population is desperately needed, a national campaign against immigration will expose environmental groups to accusations of racism and xenophobia.

The issue is so sensitive that the leaders of some organizations, such as the National Audubon Society and the Natural Resources Defense Council, declined to venture opinions, while others admitted to being thoroughly conflicted.

Stewart Udall, who served as Interior secretary under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and helped establish the nation’s wilderness system, was an early proponent of global population control. He continues to hold those views, but worries about making immigration into a cause celebre.

“I just don’t flatly disagree with the idea of slowing immigration,” said Udall, now 84 and living in New Mexico, “but making it a big emotional issue is a mistake.”

Leaders of the conservation movement have been warning about the perils of unchecked population growth since the 1960s.

Udall was one of the first conservationists to draw attention to the subject in his 1963 book “The Quiet Crisis.” Former Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich followed more provocatively with “The Population Bomb,” which was co-published by the Sierra Club.

Today, environmentalists fear they are losing their fight to protect natural resources. Unchecked human consumption, most environmentalists are convinced, is the driving force behind climate change, atmospheric pollution, loss of wildlife habitat and urban sprawl.

“You keep wondering if the places that you saved really will be saved,” Udall said.

The U.S. population, now at 292.8 million, is expected to surge by 50% over the next 50 years, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau projections.

About 40% to 45% of the projected growth will come from immigration, said Gregory Spencer, chief of the bureau’s population projection branch. Add the children of immigrants who are born as U.S. citizens, and the percentage will jump to 60% to 65%, he said.

The United States has the highest birth rate and highest rate of teenage pregnancy of any wealthy industrialized nation. Although the club advocates family planning to stabilize birth rates, its efforts are aimed primarily at developing nations.

So far, its leaders have not wanted to spar with anti-abortion groups over programs to promote birth control and sex education in the United States.

Americans make up less than 5% of the world’s population. But they consume roughly 25% of the world’s oil and other natural resources, and are responsible for 25% of the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are contributing to global warming, a disparity that has angered other nations.

Many environmental leaders insist that the problem is not an overabundance of people, but a stubborn refusal of an affluent society to live within its means. The alternative to pulling up the drawbridge on immigrants, they say, is smarter urban planning and increased emphasis on conserving resources and reducing pollution.

“We can’t escape into Eden,” said Roger Kennedy, former national parks director under President Clinton. “We have to continue to have restrictions on immigration, but that is less important than the question of how we humans live with nature. This other issue is a distraction.”

Immigration has reemerged as a flashpoint of debate among conservationists because of an insurgent campaign to take over the leadership of the 112-year-old Sierra Club, one of the nation’s most influential environmental groups.

A slate of candidates for five available seats on the club’s 15-member board wants the group to push for stronger limits on immigration.

The election battle has brought cries of immigrant bashing and counter-claims of politically correct demagoguery, attracting national attention and spurring a fresh round of soul searching among environmental leaders.

Nelson, the former Wisconsin senator, now 88, has endorsed one of the candidates running on an immigration-control slate, Cornell professor David Pimentel; Robert Kennedy Jr. is supporting efforts by the club’s current leaders to defeat the dissidents. The outcome of the election, which has begun via mail and the Internet, will be decided next month.

The club won’t continue to be an effective advocate of conservation if it refuses to take a stand on immigration, say Lamm and like-minded challengers of the status quo.

“Certainly, the ecosystem cannot stand a half a billion consuming Americans,” said Lamm, who is running for the club’s board.

“The best thing for the United States to do is to show by example what a sustainable society could be,” he said. “Any ecology textbook you pick up brings up population as part of the equation. We are going to lose our soul in the environmental movement if we back down from this debate simply because it is controversial.”

The other side argues that, given the environmental movement’s reputation as largely white and well-off -- the Sierra Club remains more than 90% white, despite efforts to diversify its ranks -- conservation groups cannot afford to be portrayed as nativists.

“The environmental movement didn’t invent racism, but it’s not immune from racism,” Pope said. He has called on the group’s membership to “rise above” the immigration debate, which already has attracted interest from anti-immigrant and even white supremacist groups. Otherwise, he said, “If we are saying the human footprint is just too large, they will suspect that we are saying the human footprint is just too dark.”

State Sen. Martha Escutia, a Whittier Democrat known for sponsoring environmental protection measures, echoes Pope’s concerns.

“When all things go wrong in politics, there is always this human reaction to blame the immigrants,” Escutia said. “If the economy is bad, blame the immigrants. Terrorism, blame the immigrants. To me, it just seems to be part of a continuum of thought that blames immigrants for the problems of America.”

The 757,000-member Sierra Club since 1994 has sought to expand its membership to reflect the States’ multiethnic mosaic. It has sent staff members to the Detroit ghetto to fight against a recycling plant accepting toxic waste. In Arizona, the club has joined a Native American effort to protect sacred sites. It runs volunteer programs to take inner-city children into the wilderness to sleep under the stars.

“The people who have been working to broaden the Sierra Club’s base -- and make it look less white and upper-middle class and more like the rest of America -- see the push to restrict immigration as a threat to all of the work that they have done,” Pope said.

In 1996, the club’s board decided to take an official “neutral” stance on immigration -- a decision ratified 60% to 39% by the club’s members two years later. The vote led to the resignations of about 1,000 members.

Supporters of the current dissident campaign, who include three current Sierra Club board members, say recent leaders have been too timid to tackle the bigger problems besetting the planet. Some of the candidates also want to place a greater emphasis on another potentially divisive issue: animal rights.

“I am not sitting on this board to represent people; I am on this board to represent endangered species,” said one of the dissident board members, Paul Watson, president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. “You want to talk about migration? Let’s talk about migration of birds and wolves. They are running out of habitat. We have a responsibility to defend nature.”