In environmental circles the Sierra Club has long enjoyed a reputation as an independent, influential voice on a host of issues, from the chemicals we dump to drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Thankfully, some of its members still think for themselves and are willing to speak their piece -- even when it comes to bucking the Sierra Club itself.
For years, some of the Sierra Club's most persistent criticism has been aimed at Clorox, a chemicals giant best known for producing cleaning products, chief among them bleach. In particular, the club and other environmental watchdog groups have been very concerned about the chlorine present in Clorox products.
So imagine the shock many of the club's 730,000 members must have felt when they heard the news that the national leadership had signed a deal to allow Clorox to use the Sierra Club's name and logo in connection with a new line of supposedly "green" cleaning products.
It is the first time since the club was founded by naturalist John Muir in 1892 that it has endorsed a product or loaned its name or its logo for marketing purposes.
No one -- particularly the club's national leadership -- is saying just what the Sierra Club is getting out of the deal. An environmental executive estimated the club's compensation must be hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions. The club said it will only get paid if Clorox's new green products sell.
While other club officials and chapters expressed concern over the deal, so far only the leadership of the northern Michigan chapter has, to their credit, done anything about it. The six board members of the club's 800-member northern Michigan chapter resigned in protest over the Clorox decision, saying they were "stunned" by the news.
"We just couldn't be part of an organization that jumped into bed with one of the most negative environmentally impacting companies in America," former group chairwoman Monica Evans said.
Evans and others have said they were particularly disappointed that over the years the club has never aligned itself with existing, truly "green" companies creating cleaning products and other green goods.
It's a valid -- and telling -- point.
The club's national leadership said it felt it could make "the really big changes" only if big business was willing to work "towards those changes" too. But that sounds a lot more like justification than explanation. Note that nowhere has Clorox said it would stop producing the products that have so troubled the club in the past.
How about endorsing a truly green company that could, with enough support, actually compete with Clorox?
It seems obvious that the initiative for this deal came from Clorox, not the other way around. So who is leading whom?
Someone here has been co-opted; to their credit, it wasn't the local Sierra Club leadership.
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