Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
4
ClimAte, the environment,
And sCientiFiC ACtivism
in 1982, the sierra cluB's executive director, michael m c closkey,
sent around “Criteria for International Campaigns” as a guide for develop-
ing international initiatives under the club's growing International Program.
McCloskey was the head of an organization that had made its name through
grassroots organizing, and his criteria were not all that surprising. First and
foremost, McCloskey argued, an international environmental goal must
be achievable “within a reasonable time frame.” The goal must be “ clear
and discrete; not ill-defined.” Viable goals must not “cover impossibly large
situations” and must deal “with conditions for which a legal or regulatory
solution is possible.” McCloskey demanded that the issues the organization
took up abroad fit neatly into an institutional forum— legal or regulatory—
that the Sierra Club had the competence and capability to influence. Issues,
he emphasized, should strike the club's members as clear threats to their
“deeply felt values.” The source of the threat must be something that could
be pinpointed, with the larger problem put into a real-life context accessible
to concerned members— that is, nothing “too exotic nor overly technical.” 1
McCloskey wanted the Sierra Club's International Program to be an exten-
sion of the group's efforts at home— that is, tackling clear and discrete, easily
accessible problems with definitive short- and midterm solutions achievable
through familiar patterns of public advocacy, legislation, and litigation. The
problem of climate change was none of these things.
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