Sierra Club sells out environment with 'No' to anti-immigration policy

From Behind the Lens

By Ryan Smith

In the largest voter turnout in Sierra Club history, leaders of the nation’s most influential environmental group defeated efforts by anti-immigration proponents trying to take control of five open seats on the board of directors.

In the face of overwhelming defeat, this small faction of supporters now faces an uphill battle to influence the government to limit the number of immigrants crossing the border.

Sierra Club leaders have avoided the topic like the plague, saying it doesn’t believe social issues and issues of race are part of their mission. But, is the Sierra Club just being naïve? Are its members shying away from the topic because of the dreaded R-word?

Anti-immigration supporters say that massive numbers of people settling in the United States is causing irreparable environmental damage that can’t be combated with traditional overpopulation theories.

Former Colorado governor and candidate for the board, Richard Lamm, argued before the decision was made that, “A reduction in the flow of immigrants would help the U.S. develop a sustainable, equitable, environmentally benign nation that could serve as an example of sustainability to the world.”

But the rest of the world—or at least the over-insulated world of the Sierra Club—isn’t seeing eye-to-eye with Lamm and his supporters.

For the past couple of months, the Sierra Club’s stance on immigration has been at the center of a heated debate among its members. Traditionally neutral on immigration, the Sierra Club has taken a hands-off approach to the idea that immigration is a contributing factor to the nation’s overpopulation.

Members fearing that racist sentiments would undermine the environmental movement adamantly rejected the anti-immigration policy, saying that non-environmental groups were trying to take over and change the club’s agenda.

However, is ruling out immigration as a source of overpopulation in the United States unreasonable?

The U.S. Census Bureau predicts the country’s population could double this century and nearly 70 percent of that increase would be from immigration. By the year 2050, the projected increase in population would reach 404 million totaling more than 600 million people living in the United States.

That’s more than half the population of China.

Such an increase in population would increase sprawl and so drastically reduce farmland that the nation would no longer be a food-exporting nation within 40 years.

Cornell professor David Pimentel stated on the Diversity Alliance Web site that, “Americans now pay an average of 15 percent of their income on food, which could rise to 30 to 50 percent in a few decades if current population trends continue…Groundwater is being depleted up to 160 percent faster than its recharge rate.”

For the Sierra Club to say that immigration does not have an effect on the environment seems more like political cowardice than educated philosophy.

Supporting a move to reduce the number of immigrants coming into the United States should not be misconstrued as racism, but as a viable solution to an imminent problem.

The United States has historically been known as a melting pot of cultures and ideas. But, if the place that harbors those ideas cannot sustain it, how is that fair to those already living here or to those who come here and find the living conditions no better than where they came from?

“ By restricting immigration we are not turning our backs on other disadvantaged countries, but protecting and improving the nation’s economic and social strengths so that we will be better fit to help others abroad,” stated a document from the Federation of American Immigration Reform.

If overpopulation is a major cause of environmental destruction then it does concern the Sierra Club and it needs to be addressed. We are moving into an age of globalization and the people of this country have worked too hard to allow racism to cloud our better judgment.

People need to realize this is not an issue of racism or anti-immigration sentiments. Rather, it’s a need to protect, preserve and sustain our nation’s resources for the future of this country and those who wish to benefit from it.

— This columnist can be reached at collegian@csufresno.edu.