Or how the Sierra Club was bought and paid for on immigration

Until a few months ago, I had no idea what The Emerald Mile is.  Or was.  But my sister, as is her wont, helped straighten me out.

Over lunch, she the put on the hard sell:  “The Emerald Mile is a fabulous book.  You need to read it.  It’s about the fastest run that’s ever been made though the Grand Canyon in a little, wooden river dory.  Sure, there’s a little environmentalism thrown in. But it’s basically a great adventure story.  My kids loved it.  You will too.”

So I listened to an unabridged version.  And the book’s, indeed, a good one.  The story of three crazed “river rats” who pulled off this hair raising feat by getting slingshot through the Canyon on the back of a raging Colorado River at the height of a hundred year flood is compelling.

But wait.  There’s more.

But the story of the record breaking run down the river is, in many ways, mostly a peg on which to hang the much bigger story of human interaction with one of our nation’s most iconic natural wonders.  It’s a story that revolves around two polar extremes:  the dam building, engineering geniuses who bent the Colorado’s raging spring floods to man’s purposes. And, in the process, turned the river into an enormous, usually docile plumbing system.

At the other pole are environmental groups, with the Sierra Club in the vanguard, who eventually brought the dam building to a screeching halt.  But not, of course, until after some of the Canyon’s most stunning features were submerged in watery graves.

Much of the book is devoted to a history of the Sierra Club and it’s long time Executive Director, David Brower.  It tells how the Club went from little more than an “alpine picnicking society”, to, under Brower’s leadership, an organization espousing a militantly environmentalist, anti-immigration agenda.

And then, because of strings that were attached to a gift of more than $100 million from David Gelbaum, a pro-immigration, Jewish oligarch, the Sierra Club reverted to its picnicking club roots.  When he made the contribution, Gelbaum told then Sierra Club director, Carl Pope, that “if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.”  Pope, like an obedient lap dog, laid down and gratefully licked the hand that fed him.

See here, as well, for the story of how Gelbaum upped his purchase price for the Club to $200 million.  And how the Club has come out for virtually unlimited immigration.

To protest this immigration sell out, Brower resigned from the Club’s board, saying:

He [Brower] also criticized the Sierra Club leadership for not taking a stronger position against increased immigration into the United States, which in 1998 was the subject of a divisive internal debate over club policy.

”Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of the problem. It has to be addressed.”

BS talks population control.  And money walks.

When I was in the Colorado legislature, on two occasions I ran bills that would have mandated that all Colorado employers use the E-Verify system to assure that job applicants are legally eligible to work in the U.S.  Illegal immigrants, of course, are usually drawn to this country for jobs.

On both occasions, Colorado environmental organizations opposed E-Verify.  Why?  Because, according to Pam Kiely, an environmental lobbyist, “We have to control world population first.  Then deal with the United States.” (Environmental groups, like most organizations with similar interests, run in packs.  The Sierra Club was one of the pack. Pam was speaking for the Club).

Pam’s logic doesn’t pass the smell test.  Why?  Because the U.S. has the fastest growing population of any industrialized nation in the world.  America accounts for all population growth among advanced countries.  And by 2050 we’re likely to add over 110 million people.  Imagine what 110 million more people will do to your commute.  The price of housing.  The pressure on our national parks.  And virtually all of that is attributable to immigration; the native born US population has stabilized at the replacement level.

Practicing what you preach on population control

Well, Pam, good luck with that strategy for controlling the world’s population.  I can just see the Club lecturing countries with sky rocketing populations like Oman, Niger and Tanzania about getting their population houses in order.   While ignoring what population growth and immigration is doing to the Sierra Club’s own country.  And the world’s population grows from our current, astounding number of over 7 billion.  To an unfathomable 11 billion by 2100.

So, Sierra Club members, party hearty on your exotic cruises.  And keep buying those coffee table books.  While your bought and paid for leadership ignores America’s mushrooming population.  And the tides of immigrants continue to lap up against the shores of places like the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellow Stone, and the Grand Tetons.