TIME: Sierra Club Took Millions From Gas Drillers

Scott Detrow / StateIm­pact Pennsylvania

A Brad­ford County well pad

Here in Penn­syl­va­nia, the Sierra Club is one of the fiercest oppo­nents of nat­ural gas drilling. The group has pushed for a mora­to­rium on hydraulic frac­tur­ing,opposes addi­tional leas­ing of state for­est land, and wants law­mak­ers to pass a broad sev­er­ance tax.

That’s why TIME Magazine’s new report was so surprising:

TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 mil­lion in dona­tions from the gas indus­try, mostly from Aubrey McClen­don, CEO of Chesa­peake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling com­pa­nies in the U.S. and a firm heav­ily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal cam­paign. Though the group ended its rela­tion­ship with Chesa­peake in 2010—and the Club says it turned its back on an addi­tional $30 mil­lion in promised donations—the news raises con­cerns about influ­ence indus­try may have had on the Sierra Club’s inde­pen­dence and its sup­port of nat­ural gas in the past. It’s also sure to anger ordi­nary mem­bers who’ve been uneasyabout the Club’s rela­tion­ship with cor­po­ra­tions. “The chap­ter groups and vol­un­teers depend on the Club to have their back as they fight pol­lu­tion from any indus­try, and we need to be unre­strained in our advo­cacy,” Michael Brune, the Sierra Club’s exec­u­tive direc­tor since 2010, told me. “The first rule of advo­cacy of is that you shouldn’t take money from indus­tries and com­pa­nies you’re try­ing to change.”

Sierra Club  Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Michael Brune has responded to the story on the group’s website:

By the time I assumed lead­er­ship of the Club in March 2010, our view of nat­ural gas had changed — so I made sure our pol­icy did, too. We cre­ated a strong nat­ural gas cam­paign com­prised of staff and vol­un­teer lead­ers. Some chap­ters sought to estab­lish tough safe­guards at the state and fed­eral level to pro­tect their air and water; oth­ers sought to sus­pend frack­ing com­pletely until those stan­dards were in place. By mid-August 2010, with gas indus­try prac­tices and our poli­cies increas­ingly in con­flict, I rec­om­mended to the Board, and it agreed, to end the fund­ing rela­tion­ship between the Club and the gas indus­try, and all fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies or executives.

Our posi­tion today could not be more clear: We still need to move Amer­ica beyond coal, as quickly as we can while tak­ing care of the work­ers in the mines and at coal-burning util­i­ties. And as we retire these coal plants, we’ll need to replace them with as much clean energy as we pos­si­bly can. In the process, we’ll use as lit­tle gas as pos­si­ble and work to ensure that the gas that is used is pro­duced as respon­si­bly as possible.