Sierra Club took $26 million from Chesapeake Energy

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**Frazzled**

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/02/03/sierra-club-took-26-million-from-chesapeake-energy/

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Sierra Club took $26 million from Chesapeake Energy

The Sierra Club took more than $26 million from Chesapeake Energy over three years while promoting natural gas as a cleaner, more efficient alternative to coal, the group’s executive director admitted.

Michael Brune wrote in a blog post that the environmental group took millions donations from individuals and subsidies of Chesapeake Energy, one of the world’s leading natural gas companies.

At the same time, the group was stepping up the fight against coal-powered plants, arguing natural gas was a clean, green energy source. Time Magazine, which first reported the story, reported the money helped to fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

“The idea was that we shared at least one common purpose — to move our country away from dirty coal,” Brune wrote in the blog post.

The donations, which happened between 2007 and 2010, came primarily from Chesapeake Energy Chief Executive Officer Aubrey McClendon, Time reported.

At the time of the donations, natural gas companies, including Chesapeake Energy, were lobbied Congress to change climate legislation and positioned the fuel as a cleaner alternative than coal.

“Back in 2007, Chesapeake and the Sierra Club had a shared interest in moving our nation toward a clean energy future based on the expanded use of natural gas, especially in the power sector,” Chesapeake spokesman Jim Gipson told Time Magazine.

Gipson said the group and Chesapeake mutually agreed to end the funding.

Since 2010, the Sierra Club has greatly changed its stance on natural gas. The group has been critical of the use of hydraulic fracturing, a process used to release trapped natural gas and oil in shale formations, because what it calls environmental risks associated with it.

Brune, who was not the group’s executive director at the time, said the group has changed its policy and stopped accepting the donations.

“We cannot accept money from an industry we need to change,” he wrote. “Very quickly, the board of directors, with my strong encouragement, cut off these donations and rewrote our gift acceptance policy

**juraigamer**

Money issues with large corporations? Say it isn't so!

**Piston Honda**

They came to my University once.

kept harassing me for my email. Broke down and Gave it to them.

They are worse than the people in Africa or Russia trying to scam me.

**Ouze**

So, what's the problem here, exactly? Obviously, something is deeply wrong since the executive director admitted it. Not stated it, or posted it; admitted.

Natural gas is cleaner than coal. This is indisputable, right? I'm talking the actual burning of it, not the acquisition thereof.

So what's the problem with environmentalists endorsing gas as a better energy source, and as over time as the downsides of fracking become better known, changing their stance? Should they never had endorsed any energy source at all, even one that is cleaner? Or should they have never changed their minds when the bad parts started to become known?

I don't have any strong feelings on the Sierra Club in general, and and apathetic at best towards environmental issues, but I'm not seeing the giant scandal that this apparently is.

**biccat**

Ouze wrote:So what's the problem with environmentalists endorsing gas as a better energy source, and as over time as the downsides of fracking become better known, changing their stance? Should they never had endorsed any energy source at all, even one that is cleaner? Or should they have never changed their minds when the bad parts started to become known?

I think the problem is taking money from a group whose product you're endorsing while portraying yourself as an unbiased/uninterested "environmentalist group."

However, if you take the position that the Sierra Club is a liberal advocacy group that exists for the benefit of liberals, and promotes causes that benefit them either personally or as a group, then there's no real problem here.

Sure it's a scam, but I'm pretty sure it's not illegal.

**Ouze**

If they never disclosed that they were getting paid by the gas companies to endorse it, then I absolutely see the problem. Even if they aren't required to do so it's kinda weaselly.