From what? Themselves? For years they did little to preserve their intellectual honesty, and opened their membership to anybody who did not represent the conservative movement in this country. No card-carrying Republicans need apply. After all, those were the people who would denude the mountains, dam and divert the natural flow of snow melt, hunt down wildlife to the point of extinction, and throw away Styrofoam coffee cups on the roadside.
So the Sierra Club is under threat from some of the radicals they freely invited in. Some 95% of all the woe in this world is self-induced.
The Sierra Club is hardly alone among large advocacy groups vulnerable to the push-pull of single-issue activists. Two years ago, four challengers ran unsuccessfully for the Automobile Club of Southern California board the first contested election in 30 years on a platform of big tax cuts for motorists. The AARP took heat from its members after it enthusiastically lobbied for President Bush's recent Medicare rewrite.It's listed as an editorial, so basically anything goes. The LATimes is concerned that someone other than Limo Liberals will get control of Sierra Club, and therefore lists two organizations that had to deal with evil conservatives trying to work within the system. As to the other posters question as to why no one had ever checked to see what Sierra Club officials drive, the LATimes will never do any investigation of those they perceive to be on their side. Nor will you see any investigation of the size of their headquarters, how it affected the environment when it was built, or what percentage of their income goes to their mission and what goes to administrative costs.