  
For Immediate Release:
November 18, 2011
Contact: Maggie Kao, 202-675-2384
Carl Pope to Step Down as Sierra Club
Chairman
Will continue to assist Sierra Club as strategic
advisor
San Francisco, CA – The Sierra Club today announced that Carl Pope has
stepped down as Chairman, a position he assumed in April of 2010 when Michael
Brune succeeded him as the organization’s Executive Director. Pope will continue to serve as Senior
Strategic Advisor to the Club, but will devote most of his time to new
initiatives, with a primary initial focus on the nurturing of a collaborative
effort in which business, labor, environmentalists and others will work to
revitalize America’s manufacturing base.
Brune, who had been Executive Director of Rainforest Action Network
before taking over the top staff position at the Sierra Club, thanked Pope and
wished him well in his new venture. “Carl’s generosity and graciousness in
helping me to learn my role at the Sierra Club proved invaluable and made the
transition as seamless as possible,” said Brune. I will continue to welcome his
smart, strategic input and have no doubt that the new projects in which Carl is
immersing himself will thrive as a result of his involvement.”
Pope said that his major project for the next twelve months will be
mobilizing the broad national consensus calling for a revitalized, innovative,
and sustainable American manufacturing sector, and injecting that imperative
into the 2012 elections. “Businesses,
clean tech innovators, labor unions, environmentalists and state and local
governments all understand that if we are going to develop a sustainable
economy, if we are going to regain our economic dynamism, we must bring back
manufacturing,” said Pope. “To be
competitive in the 21st century, a revitalized manufacturing sector
must deploy clean energy, low carbon fuels and sustainable technologies. But if America is going to lead the world
towards sustainability, it must manufacture far more of the goods and services
it needs here at home. Economic growth,
environmental sustainability, and domestic manufacturing constitute three
inseparable ingredients for national revitalization and recovery.”
Carl Pope has served with the Sierra Club for nearly 40 years, including
17 years as Executive Director. In addition to his work with the Sierra Club,
Mr. Pope has had a distinguished record of progressive activism and leadership.
He currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of America Votes and is a
member of the Board of American Rights at Work and the Blue-Green Alliance. Mr.
Pope is co-author, along with Paul Rauber, of Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is
Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress, which
the New York Review of Books called "a splendidly fierce book." Mr. Pope's other books include Sahib, an American Misadventure in
India (1971) and Hazardous
Waste in America (1981).
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