(Off-topic)
Even on the internet I can tell the difference between "playing hard" and outright attacks, and I don't think anybody around here is that type. But for some reason, people on the fringes all seem to think that the only way to make their point is via insults and false analogies. Typically, the people who get higher up in most organizations are the true-believers, so you sometimes see crap that offends others intentionally. On the whole, I think Sierra Club isn't about that, but it wouldn't shock me if their chair put something offense out there, because when you eat, sleep, and breathe with people who think like you, everyone who doesn't is automatically beneath you.
While many movements and groups are guilty of this behavior (including many on the right), the environmental movement is a movement that I see as marred by a fundamental disconnect with the general populace. It isn't that being an environmentalist makes you a jerk (it doesn't), it is just that group-think eventually kicks in with most movements, and true-believers stop trying to convince people who don't believe what they believe. In my opinion, the environmental movement has forgotten how to be diplomatic and persuasive, much like many radical religious groups, and it has hurt the cause in the long run. Just like I think we need a new moderate political party (shock from a Republican, huh) or a shift in one party totally to the center, I think we need a new set of flagship organizations for the environmental movement, or a move to moderation from the one's we already have. Or at least some diplomacy.
(/Off-topic)
I'm a big fan of the Nature Conservancy. So many of their properties are just amazing, and when I have some spare cash they'll be getting some. My only complaint with them is that some of their properties are closed to the public, and even those that are open to the public are often poorly signed and difficult to find. I understand and support their decision to keep some properties closed to the public, but I have to complain about their lack of signage at many properties. The trailheads are always marked, but they never have much assistance in finding the properties. Their out of office e-mail notifications are annoying, too.
