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).
###