Strength & Sustainability

Sense, sensibility, and responsibility

This column features insights and perspectives from members who have made recent impact gifts to our local Bay Chapter's Strength & Sustainability major-gifts program. The goal of Strength & Sustainability is to expand the Chapter's capacity to organize strong and effective environmental campaigns across the entire Bay Area.

This month's perspective comes from Jon Wurfl of San Francisco.

I have had a special affinity for the environment for as long as I can remember. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, on the side of a mountain, where I spent my summers fishing in a stream. One summer, when I was 15, I found myself wondering why I suddenly saw bubbling suds in the stream where I had fished for so many years. I investigated and learned that the suds were caused by new fertilizers in runoff from regional farms. This was one of my first conscious experiences of the negative impact people can have on nature.

A few years later I moved to urban Philadelphia, where I lived for 13 years. In Philly I felt less connected to the environment. I definitely missed it.

When I moved to San Francisco in 1993, I immediately felt connected to the environment again. We live in a privileged place, in one of the most densely populated cities in the country yet surrounded by amazing environmental resources, such as Ocean Beach, Golden Gate Park, Buena Vista Park, and the Presidio. Our city offers us a sense of the earth's potential, and we don't have to travel far to find even grander natural wonders - the Pacific Ocean and the majestic cliffs along our western shoreline, Mount Tamalpais, Yosemite. Here in Northern California, Mother Nature shows her best to us. We have to protect it.

I have no doubt that the splendor of our natural environment is the driving force behind San Francisco's emergence as a globally recognized progressive environmental leader. Our region has benefited from the leadership of generations of innovative, independent, critical thinkers and visionary conservationists. John Muir, who regarded Yosemite "as the grandest of all special temples of Nature", was moved to found the Sierra Club to protect it forever.

We also have an awareness about our city's place in the environment. We have concerns that other communities don't fully recognize. This unique collective sensibility prompts us to special actions, and the Sierra Club Bay Chapter plays a key role in channeling this special community caring into effective action. For example, I am excited about the path-breaking solar-energy program that the city is implementing and that the Bay Chapter is doing so much to advance. This is one of the factors that made me decide to increase my giving.

When I think about shifts in the global environment, I recognize that we have to do more.

"We all have individual responsibilities," Al Gore has said. He's right. One of the ways I can take individual responsibility for the future of our world is by increasing my contribution to the Sierra Club.

To make a contribution or to find out more about how to support the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club, please contact development director or call (510) 848-0800, ext. 309