Sierra Club

“The Sierra Club is an environmental organization in the United States and in two U.S. Territories, namely Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. … Traditionally associated with the progressive movement, the club was one of the first large-scale environmental preservation organizations in the world, and currently engages in lobbying politicians to promote environmentalist policies. Recent focuses of the club include promoting sustainable energy, mitigating global warming, and opposing the use of coal. The club is known for its political endorsements, which are often sought after by candidates in local elections; it generally supports liberal and progressive candidates in elections. … In 1960, Brower launched the Exhibit Format book series with This Is the American Earth, and in 1962 In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World, with color photographs by Eliot Porter. … The Sierra Club’s most publicized crusade of the 1960s was the effort to stop the Bureau of Reclamation from building two dams that would flood portions of the Grand Canyon. Opposing the Bridge Canyon and Marble Canyon dam projects, full-page ads the Club placed in the New York Times and the Washington Post in 1966 exclaimed, ‘This time it’s the Grand Canyon they want to flood,’ and asked, ‘Should we also flood the Sistine Chapel so tourists can get nearer the ceiling?’ … Although the club had played the leading role blocking PG&E’s nuclear power plant proposed for Bodega Bay, California in the early 1960s, that case had been built around the local environmental impact and earthquake danger from the nearby San Andreas fault, not from opposition to nuclear power itself. …  But Brower concluded that nuclear power at any location was a mistake, and he voiced his opposition to the plant, contrary to the club’s official policy. As pro- and anti-Brower factions polarized, the annual election of new directors reflected the conflict. Brower’s supporters won a majority in 1968, but in the April 1969 election the anti-Brower candidates won all five open positions. Ansel Adams and president Richard Leonard, two of his closest friends on the board, led the opposition to Brower, charging him with financial recklessness and insubordination and calling for his ouster as executive director. …”
Wikipedia
Why the War on Nuclear Threatens Us All
PBS: Timeline of Environmental Movement and History
PBS: When the Sierra Club Saved the Grand Canyon (Video)
National Parks and the 1964 Wilderness Act (Video)

Protestors at City Hall in Cleveland, Ohio, January 20, 1970.