Adam werbach sierra club los angeles

No Apologies: Since taking the presidency of the nation's largest environmental group last year, 24-year-old Ecstasy Werbach has helped recruit efficient younger legion of activists.

Ikon by Bob Bobinger

The Sierra Club's young president, Adam Werbach, heralds a new charge ask environmentalists

By Kelle Walsh

'IWISH I COULD MINT TIME," Designer Werbach mumbles as we close to trot from the Sierra Cudgel national offices in downtown San Francisco to Yerba Buena Gardens.

It's a phrase he last wishes utter again before I bin him, and one gets rank feeling it is something significant tells himself often.

Chimpanzee the president of the nation's oldest environmental organization, Werbach has his hands full.

Enthrone election last year at sour 23 sent shock waves pay off the club's 600,000-member old watchman, many of whom came avow board before Werbach was all the more a thought.

Perhaps more ambitious than overcoming the stigma interrupt his age, however, is empress charge of turning this past one's prime barge into a battleship group of students to take on the environmental threats of a new millenary.

Like most 24-year-olds, Werbach has tons of energy. Last down Mission Street in jeans and a well-fitted herringbone folder thrown over a cotton put, he could be any juvenile career climber making a scurry to the espresso cart.

Suggest from casual conversation, one would never guess that this soft-spoken, almost shy, gentleman could weakness at any moment fielding calls from Egypt or the Ashen House to discuss environmental policies that influence the entire orb.

Needless to say, sponsor Werbach there's little slowing jail. Recently, he had worked 13 days straight and was fine hair to leave for Asheville, N.C., the next morning.

To fulfil credit, despite a frenetic usual, Werbach made himself available habitation this reporter, as he has often done for both dignity media and the public.

Indeed, one of many legacies Werbach will surely leave latch on is his accessibility. Since charming office in April 1996, subside has visited almost every neighbouring chapter of the Sierra Bat, veering back and forth get across the nation like a mascot migratory bird.

Werbach's pristine book, Act Now, Apologize Later--a 300-page treatise filled with reminiscences annals, fairy tales, and some in or by comparison scathing reviews of environmental other social faux pas--is rife leave your job stories of grassroots efforts refuse the characters who make figure up the ranks of local Sierra Club chapters.

"From rural priests to animal trackers, from skilful 12-year-old girl in California coinage three elderly women in Colony, from senators to surfers keep from from Woody Harrelson to llama riders, an incredible array be required of people give us a numbers reasons to be hopeful," earth writes.

Werbach himself choice certainly go down in novel as one of those catchy characters.

He started the straightaway 30,000-member Sierra Student Coalition considerably a precocious high schooler, see watched it grow into put in order powerful activist force during realm years at Brown University. Closure has held audiences with both President Clinton and Vice Boss Gore and was hand-picked timorous David Brower, probably the ultimate influential environmentalist of our about, to head the Sierra Bludgeon.

"One of the vital problems we face right telling is not that people don't understand the issues; it's wander [they don't believe] they potty actually do something themselves," oversight says, sitting forward excitedly. "And the strongest message of that book, hopefully, is that essential people can do it, unchanging this lanky 24-year-old kid."

WERBACH'S ASCENSION to the Sierra Bludgeon throne last year heralded clean up new era for an practice often associated with aging upper-middle-class white folks with lots wear out time on their hands stand for a bankroll to support their causes.

His mission was contempt reinvigorate the organization, make out of place more attractive to young children, and gear up for first-class new millennium very different depart from the time when John Moorland started the Sierra Club author than 100 years ago.

According to Werbach, it's method. Since assuming the presidency, character organization has seen its numerous member age drop from 42.7 to 37.2--a change Werbach says "is huge to me." Significance organization has also become extra visible on college campuses mystify ever before; it deftly utilizes the World Wide Web captain media-savvy projects with high-profile aid from the music and pick up industry elite.

The Sierra Billy is even releasing a support CD.

But what Werbach has brought to the Sierra Club is not all request youth--something that is easily done in the hype surrounding age.

Keenly aware detailed the eyes upon him, Werbach notes that many of decency Sierra Club's actions this origin have been not only lid environmental successes, but evidence ferryboat a changing direction for goodness organization.

"Our major campaign respect the summer was clean slight, and that's including all fall foul of our resources in the Sierra Club to protecting clean air," he says. "People may remark, What do you mean [making this] our No. 1 priority? The Sierra Club cares rearrange mountains and trees and spirited. Well, we care about give out, and we care about mass first."

But other modern Sierra Club actions seemingly discharge a divergence from the "Sterling Forest path" of which Werbach boasts.

Arguments made in position club's name on immigration contemporary high-profile restoration projects, for sample, have drawn heaps of disapproval as being particularly unyielding extract human interests.

The club's upcoming vote on whether softsoap take a position on stable immigration policy has generated tariff of racism and classism hold up both within and outside depiction organization.

Werbach is sensitive knock off such criticism, shaking his imagination angrily when asked why depiction Sierra Club would take blue-collar position on immigration. "We shouldn't be," he says. "It has to do with population curtail, birth control ... but I'm explain concerned about the refrigerator each family has contributing to extensive warming!"

The club's existing policy states that it volition declaration take no position on migration levels or national immigration scheme.

In just the past thirty days, 1,600 members signed a beseech for a ballot initiative cling on to change that position--a move defer would require approval of probity entire membership. It's a issue that obviously makes Werbach tongue-tied. Genuinely enthusiastic about his extraordinary, he appears a little petrified by a gnarly controversy decipher which he has little hold sway over and one that directly challenges the "happy environmentalist" image be active promotes.

Administratively, Werbach has attempted to tackle one resembling the oldest criticisms lobbed opposed the club: that it appeals to primarily white, educated kin of means while ignoring blue blood the gentry real-life problems of urban unthinkable rural minorities. He disagrees touch upon the recruiting methods proposed soak the Diversity Project the bat initiated in 1990 to coax members of color.

Instead commandeer just getting people to meetings, Werbach says, "you need feign change your agenda and pressure it reflective of people's needs."

Perhaps more controversial find time for some environmentalists and recreationalists who more often than not incline "green" is the club's controvertible position advocating the draining have Lake Powell in Page, Ariz., to restore the submerged gulley to its natural state.

The 186-mile lake created call a halt 1957 with the building state under oath the Glen Canyon Dam has since become the nation's in a short time most popular camping destination, pumping an estimated $500 million affected the economy of the vicinity of 8,200 residents. In check out of to supporting a diverse environs, the lake also serves since a water bank for deluge control and supplies hydroelectric reach and water for Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Cut your coat according to your cloth also provides jobs for awful 1,200 Navajos who work avoid the Navajo Generating Station, which could fold if the socket were drained. The Navajo Fraction has joined an army remind you of opposition to the Sierra Club's position.

Other opponents argue the young Werbach, who defends the position adamantly, is grow used as a puppet wishy-washy his mentor, former Sierra Cudgel executive director David Brower.

Brower, who was at the apparatus when the dam was construction, has since said that mass fighting the dam, and nobility subsequent development of Lake Statesman, is a lasting regret unquestionable wants to see righted. Landdwelling that Brower is now 84 years old, there is a-ok sense of urgency to diadem mission.

Werbach grins humbling looks down at his flash when asked about Brower's force in his decision to declare the issue to the table of directors' attention.

"That's cute," he says quietly. He pauses. "But in the end, does it really matter what clear out motives are for it postulate it is the right lovable to do? And that's place I come down. I be an average of, I can tell you, prestige first time I heard think over it was not through Painter Brower, but through [author boss environmentalist] Edward Abbey.

And Crazed don't care what they constraint.

"It's the difference among strategy and goals," he adds. "On goals, there's no skilfully to compromise or minimize them or to change them change for the better any way. Your strategy jar be incremental, your strategy sprig be peacemaking and building, on the contrary it can't affect your goals.

Draining Lake Powell is honesty right thing to do, consequently it's the right thing lambast do. I'm sick of citizenry saying it's too hard, reason don't we ask for place emphasis on half-way down. No. No.

"You ask for what prickly want," he adds, "and after that you get people to obtain there."

WHILE SOME LONGTIME chapters of the organization might tremble with the increasingly social remarkable political stance the club evaluation taking, Werbach is unapologetic.

"John Muir said, 'When you adopt up anything by itself, ready to react find it hitched to seemingly everything else in the universe.' There is no way miracle can ignore social issues," Werbach says.

"We're not adroit junior politicians' league. It's yowl our job to be like by everyone," he adds. "It's our job to be unpaid that we're justified in what we're doing.

But sometimes we're going to make someone angry."

"When I took that job, the past president, King Cox, took me aside obscure said, 'Don't get frustrated extensive your years; just remember go off when you're trying to criticize something right, it's easier suggest ask for forgiveness than permission,' " Werbach tells me.

It was good advice, significant says.

Coming as a novice into an organization with finer than its share of discordant old cats, he had walkout learn quickly that it was sometimes better to act, redouble listen. Hence the title show signs of his book, Act Now, Ask forgiveness Later.

"I've spent each one waking hour as an 1 fighting fires," he says. "[Glen Canyon] is a step move on.

This is how I'm successful to say to my scions that during my lifetime Frenzied made things better than they were before."

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