Review:
In the Thick of It: My Life in the Sierra Club
By Michael
McCloskey
Reviewed by
Adam M. Sowards
University of Idaho, USA
Michael McCloskey. In the Thick of It: My Life in the Sierra Club. Washington: Island
Press, 2005. 399 pp. ISBN: 1-55963-979-2 (Cloth). US$29.95.
Any
"Who's Who" list for the modern environmental movement would include
near the top Michael McCloskey, the longtime executive director of the Sierra
Club. With In the Thick of It,
McCloskey provides an unprecedented inside look at the workings of the Sierra
Club and the maturation of environmentalism since 1960. Few authors could give
us more insight, and readers of In the
Thick of It will be amply rewarded.
In
this book, McCloskey traces his professional life. A University of Oregon Law
School graduate, McCloskey long enjoyed the outdoors and began working on
conservation causes while still a student. Although he once aspired to be a
politician, he began his environmental career in 1961 as a field organizer for
the Sierra Club and the Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs. McCloskey stayed
at this position for almost four years, traveling the Northwest, networking
among conservationists, and promoting nature protection for places like the
North Cascades National Park. By 1965, he moved to San Francisco and soon
became the Sierra Club's conservation director, a position from which he
directed important club campaigns to establish Redwood National Park and to
prevent dams from encroaching Grand Canyon National Park, among other issues.
McCloskey also was instrumental in developing litigation as an increasingly
important tool in the Sierra Club's strategizing. The book describes these
efforts throughout the 1960s well, which is an important achievement since
McCloskey was truly in the thick of it during this formative period of
activism.
As
Congress passed a number of sweeping pieces of environmental legislation during
the two decades after 1964, McCloskey rose steadily through the Sierra Club
ranks and became one of the most powerful professional conservationists in the
nation. McCloskey served a number of roles for the Sierra Club during his long
tenure, including two terms as executive director ending in 1987 and chairman
of the club following that service. He was simply the most prominent face of
the Sierra Club through the 1970s and 1980s-"indelibly a Sierra Club
man," in his words (p. 325). His perspective on and role in the major
issues of the era such as the energy crisis, Reagan-era public land policies,
pollution control, and wilderness designation and management are all chronicled
here with detail. Consequently, In the
Thick of It consists not only of a useful compendium of environmental
issues but also an insider's account of strategy and lobbying politicians,
business interests, and federal administrators. The era's personalities from
David Brower to James Watt grace these pages as McCloskey dealt with them all.
In
addition, some readers may be fascinated with the inner workings and divisions
of the Sierra Club and movement as a whole. From the Brower ouster in 1969 to
more recent schisms over immigration policy, the Sierra Club has hardly been a
model of consensus. McCloskey's account of these and other rifts provide us
with a better sense of the complexities of this large, influential organization
and the issues with which it has been concerned. By extension, McCloskey shows
us competing strategies among environmental organizations, too. Anyone with the
notion that the Sierra Club, or the environmental movement as a whole, took an
ideologically pure position and rigidly held to it through these many
controversies will be disabused by In the
Thick of It. Factions challenged each other and constantly negotiated
strategy among themselves and with their opponents. In the end, McCloskey
argues for the need for visionaries and ideologues to be balanced against
pragmatists for achieving important goals. Although McCloskey views himself as
having a good blend of these elements, In
the Thick of It presents a stronger portrait of him as the consummate
pragmatist and strategist who favors the gradual public policy solutions.
As
undeniably important as In the Thick of
It is, there are shortcomings, although many of them simply stem from the
genre. As a memoir, the book necessarily places McCloskey at the center.
Consequently, he seems to be involved in and a key figure of every substantive
environmental issue for the past four decades. While he is enormously important
to modern environmental history, the whole record will reveal other significant
actors in ways that In the Thick of It does
not and cannot. Also, when discussing divisions within the organization and
movement, McCloskey almost never presents his position as anything other than a
conciliator, a role he certainly played. Yet one wonders if he was so
consistently the conciliator as he suggests. McCloskey can also be defensive,
particularly concerning criticisms that the environmental movement neglected
issues of importance to the poor and people of color. Finally, the writing is
occasionally laborious, reading often like an annotated bibliography of his
work, previous writings, and speeches.
Nevertheless,
there is enormous value to In the Thick
of It and some surprises, too. Readers will find plenty of what they expect
in stories of battling polluters and navigating public policy debates from the
heady days of the 1970s, to the defensive battles against the Reagan policies
of the 1980s, to the disappointing record of the Clinton administration in the 1990s.
These accounts will be particularly welcome and important to the historical
record. Further, those readers who imagine the Sierra Club as a powerful
American environmental organization interested primarily in nature protection
especially on the West Coast will be surprised at the much larger range of
issues with which the Sierra Club and McCloskey grappled. Of particular value
is McCloskey's emphasis on the club's international work, a topic to which he
devotes several chapters. For example, he discusses early efforts to map the
world's wilderness areas and wild rivers, offers a trenchant analysis of how
trade issues contain key environmental components, and explores the club's role
and relationships with various global non-government organizations. These
elements of environmentalism have rarely been told, and McCloskey deserves
credit for bringing them to light.
Scholars
should welcome In the Thick of It. This
memoir will surely become an important reference to historians of the
environmental movement and also a welcome guide to activists. Such reflection
at the end of McCloskey's long, important career deserves our attention.
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Electronic Green
Journal,
Issue 25, 2007
ISSN: 1076-7975