Carl Pope
Chairman, The Sierra Club
Carl Pope was appointed Executive Director of the Sierra Club in 1992. A veteran leader in the environmental movement, Mr. Pope has been with the Sierra Club for nearly thirty years. In that time he has served as Associate Conservation Director, Political Director and Conservation Director.
During Mr. Pope's tenure as Executive Director, Sierra Club added 150,000 new members, growing to 700,000 of your friends and neighbors. The Club's importance extends beyond numbers, though. The Aspen Institute, after surveying every member of Congress and key federal officials, named the Sierra Club as the most influential environmental organization in Washington, D.C.
Under Mr. Pope, the Sierra Club has helped protect nearly 10 million acres of wilderness, including such highlights as the California Desert, Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and California's Giant Sequoias National Monument. The Club brought the litigation challenging the right of Vice-President Cheney's Energy Task Force to conduct its policy making in secret negotiations with major energy interests. The Sierra Club also collected more than a million comments -- the most public comments on a single regulatory issue in history -- in support of protecting the remaining roadless areas in America's National Forests.
More recently in Mr. Pope's tenure, the Sierra Club led the charge in pressuring the Bush Administration to reverse its position against new rules that would lower the amount of arsenic in America's drinking water and mercury in our fisheries. The Sierra Club has also continued to hold the line in protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling, and in stopping repeatedly proposed omnibus energy legislation that would give tens of billions in subsidies to oil, coal and nuclear interests.
In addition to his work with the Sierra Club, Mr. Pope has had a distinguished record of environmental activism and leadership. He has served on the Boards of the California League of Conservation Voters, Public Voice, National Clean Air Coalition, California Common Cause, Public Interest Economics, Inc., and Zero Population Growth. Mr. Pope was also Executive Director of the California League of Conservation Voters and the Political Director of Zero Population Growth.
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).
Mr. Pope has also developed a fondness for organizations with the word "America" in their titles. He is a founding member and current Treasurer of America Coming Together, a coalition of many of the largest membership-based groups in the country, who have come together to increase voter participation in electoral politics. In addition, Mr. Pope serves on the board of America Votes, American Rights at Work, and America's Families United, all substantial organizations seeking to build bridges across the progressive spectrum to unions, civil rights groups, women's organizations among others.
Mr. Pope graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1967. He then spent two years as a volunteer with the Peace Corps in Barhi, Bihar, India, where he helped communities and families address the human and environmental impacts of overpopulation.
