Ben Jealous was born into the Sierra Club. His parents were members of the organization’s Ventana chapter in central California and he grew up with the coastal redwoods as his playground. He organized his first protest – to stop the clear-cutting of an old-growth redwood forest – as a teenager.

But today’s organization is not the Sierra Club of his youth, Jealous told students, staff, faculty, and community members at a keynote March 10 at Stanford. Fewer members are known as “the neighbors who get your neighbors into the outdoors,” and the organization allocates less money to conservation efforts, like establishing national parks. His lecture was more than just a talk – it was a call to build a more inclusive and effective environmental movement.

Jealous is best known for his career as a civil rights activist, including serving as CEO and president of the NAACP from 2008 to 2013. He said he became executive director of the Sierra Club in 2023 with the goal of revitalizing and expanding the organization’s original mission, to “explore, enjoy, protect.”

“At this moment in history, when our country is pitted against itself, when we are going well into our second decade of America being the most divided that it’s been since the eve of the Civil War,” Jealous said he felt it was “urgent to come back” to the Sierra Club.

“My pastor would say, ‘When David met Goliath, all he had to do was survive,’” Jealous said. “And right now, we are going through an extinction crisis where more species are dying than died when the dinosaurs went extinct. We are going through a climate crisis, and the environmentalist movement is the smallest it’s been in my lifetime.”

Nature preaches for itself

“Nature preaches for itself,” Jealous said, paraphrasing John Muir, one of the Sierra Club’s founders. “It’s insufficient to get people out into the woods just to clean their lungs. You got to get ’em out there to transform their souls.”

Transforming the world’s energy and transportation systems represents “the definitive economic opportunity of this moment for humanity,” Jealous said. He pointed to the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign, which since 2010 has sought to close all coal plants in the U.S. and help communities transition to clean energy. Successful closures so far, he said, have prevented millions of asthma attacks and tens of thousands of premature deaths.

Making that transition will require broad new alliances, he said. As an example of successful collaboration in a politically charged environment, Jealous brought up the budding solar panel industry in Dalton, Georgia – a community represented in the House by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s also an example of people connecting across racial and cultural divides.

“People get out of those trucks, and they greet each other, slap each other on the back, across every line you think would divide us,” he said, describing a scene he witnessed in the parking lot of one factory. He further illustrated this point with an anecdote about the children of those employees, whose Earth Day art projects on display depicted their parents at work.

“The children of that district, who are as diverse as the district itself, portrayed their parents as heroes, saving the planet, saving humanity, saving all the beautiful little wild creatures that those kids love,” Jealous said. “Kids get it. And it was hard not to feel a sense of hope staring at the artwork of the children of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district.”

Current polarization among Americans results from economic inequality and social division, he argued. “The purpose of racism in any form in this country is to divide working people from each other so they cannot assert an irrepressible demand to deal with their kitchen table issues,” he said.

Jealous underscored a need to raise awareness about how pollution and environmental degradation harms poor people – including poor white people. With more than 8 million poor Black people and more than 16 million poor white people in the U.S., he said, “the invisibility of the white poor in our dialogue is right at the core of the toxicity that’s threatening our environment right now.”

He referred to the example of sugarcane burning – a practice outlawed in Brazil due to its toxicity but prevalent in some U.S. communities – and its disproportionate impacts on low-income populations. Leaving out 40% of the low-income population affected by this toxic practice is politically counterproductive, Jealous said.

‘Uncomfortably large coalitions’

Jealous reminded the audience to take a historical perspective when viewing progress toward social change, specifically looking at decades from the twenties to the seventies. Jealous framed present-day efforts to enact social and environmental progress in the context of dramatic changes seen between the 1720s and 1770s – from British rule to the dawn of the American Revolution – and between the 1920s and 1970s – from the Great Depression to civil rights movements for desegregation, women’s rights, and gay rights. The challenge, he said, is to get “from the twenties to the seventies.”

He recounted two lessons from the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: the importance of concise messaging and building “uncomfortably large coalitions.”

“The Sierra Club I grew up in was bipartisan. The Sierra Club I grew up in was a place that anybody could bring their families and feel like they were welcome,” he said.

On a local level, we can relate to other people through shared experiences, such as the dangers of coal-fired power plants, the impact of rising electricity bills, and the protection of healthy ecosystems, he said. When people meet and gather face to face, it’s easier to find connection and mutual appreciation, he added, even with those who may seem “terrible on social media.”

“Let’s all of us just commit ourselves to building uncomfortably large coalitions in this moment. It’s what every species that’s depending on us to get it right is counting on,” Jealous said. “We remember when we got it right on the bald eagle. We can do it again in the midst of this extinction crisis of being driven by habitat loss for so many species.”

Take the long view

In a Q&A session moderated by Lupe Carrillo, assistant dean of the Doer School of Sustainability’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Jealous discussed allyship, federal research funding cuts, and the critical role of in-person relationships.

During a Q&A session moderated by Lupe Carrillo, Jealous shared insights about local organizing and having a long-term view of progress. | Jerry Wang

He described the cyclical nature of politics and the pendulum of power that necessitates patience. It takes more than the four years of a presidential term to create a new national park, and there’s value in working with neighbors and local communities to pass regulations at the state, county, and city levels. “The more you get into the world in which your feet are planted, the less the hyper-partisanship in Washington matters,” Jealous said.

On federal research funding cuts, he encouraged attendees to adopt a long-term perspective. “One good thing – it’s a little silver lining, I predict – is America’s shortage of science teachers will probably end in the next few years,” he said, referring to how the destabilization of universities and research institutions will put trained scientists out of work and into other positions, like teaching.

“So we have three, four years of some folks who weren’t planning to be teachers falling in love with the craft,” he said. “From a decade perspective, good things will come from that.”

In the final question from the audience, a Redwood Shores resident described how he’s working to shut down a development project and asked for advice about how to find common ground with another group trying to do the same thing. Plan a series of house parties and just get together and hang and talk it out, Jealous advised. It’s easy to be terrible on social media, but it’s really hard to hate up close.

“Let’s build uncomfortably large coalitions because ultimately, that’s America at its best,” he said. “What makes America wonderful at the end of the day is that we find a way to come together, despite it all.”