Sierra Club votes down proposal on population control

Wednesday, May 2, 2001 | 10:17 a.m.

Members of the national Sierra Club have voted down a proposal that would have urged the United States to control population growth.

The vote was especially contentious in areas such as the West, where much of the conversion of rural to developed land is attributed to population pressure. The measure failed nationally by a 54 percent to 46 percent margin, with fewer than 10 percent of the group's 680,000 members voting during the last few weeks of April, club members said.

The official results have not been announced by the club.

The Sierra Club, widely described as the nation's most powerful voice on environmental issues, considers urban sprawl a top national priority. A dissident faction of the group had urged the club to press for domestic population curbs.

Some supporters and opponents had said the vote was a de facto effort to criticize national immigration laws. Immigration and the children of immigrants account for at least half of the nation's growth by about 80 million people since the early 1970s.

And studies disseminated by supporters of the ballot question specifically target immigration reform as a way to cut U.S. population growth and protect environmental resources.

Since 1996 the club has officially been neutral on all immigration issues.

Both Carl Pope, Sierra Club executive director, and Fred Elbel, director of the pro-referendum group Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization, said immigration wasn't the central issue in the campaign.

"There were some people that were trying to make this another vote on immigration," Pope said, but "I don't think most people who voted for it or against it thought it was about immigration."

Elbel agreed.

"This is not an immigration ballot question in disguise."

Elbel criticized the club for not tackling population growth directly, but he largely sidestepped the politically sensitive issue of how to address U.S. population growth without looking at immigration, its largest component.

"The club can make the population connection without violating the 1996 neutrality position on immigration," he said.

But Elbel also said the club's leadership, which urged members to vote against the measure, is avoiding conversations on the root cause of population pressure.

"I see the leadership as being very sensitive," he said. "They're sensitive to demographics that would make them appear to be politically correct."

Elbel said millions of dollars in grant money for the organization could be in danger if the club criticized policies -- such as immigration -- that allow the U.S. population to increase.

The club already works on population issues, Pope countered.

Pope said one of the reasons that the leadership opposed the referendum is that in some cities, such as St. Louis and Cleveland, the population is not growing, though sprawl is still a big issue.

The club also will work on sprawl largely pushed by population growth in cities such as Las Vegas, he said.

"This will not diminish in any way our commitment to dealing with the root causes of population growth," Pope said.

Jane Feldman, a member of the Sierra Club's local group and co-chairwoman of the group's local conservation committee, said she is pleased with the club's rejection of the population referendum.

She said the dissidents in the group were attempting to link "two different issues that are really not that close together."

She said the core issue for the dissidents wasn't an environmental issue but a social issue: immigration.

"I think that the reason why these population growth people got involved in the sprawl campaign was that they couldn't find a hook anywhere else," Feldman said.