A petition to close down a coal plant from the green group listed some supporters who say they hadn’t signed on.
Jillian Kay Melchior
National Review
5/6/2015
A leading national watchdog group monitoring nonprofits has put the Sierra Club on its watch list after reports that three western North Carolina businesses accused the green group of listing them without permission as co-signatories on a “businesses beyond coal” campaign letter.
The Sierra Club listed 80 businesses as co-signatories last October in a letter it widely publicized, calling for Duke Energy to retire its coal plant in Asheville. But as veteran investigative reporter Michael Cronin reported in the Asheville Citizen-Times, out of 19 businesses contacted, three said they had not authorized the Sierra Club to use their name on the letter. One more business owner had signed on but wanted his name removed because he felt the Sierra Club had misrepresented what the letter would say. And the Sierra Club had also listed a business that was no longer in existence as a signatory…
…Stuart Cowles, owner of ClimbMax Climbing, was among the first business owners to speak to the local media after the Sierra Club published its open letter. He says he signed a petition expressing concerns about specific environmental practices, but he never wanted nor intended to sign on to a letter calling for Duke to shut down an entire plant. “I use electricity, I don’t want to be a hypocrite — I’m just not crazy about [some] environmental practices,” Cowles tells NR. “I would never have signed it in that aspect of knowledge. I’m not even as much [concerned] about the publicity of my opinion as I am about the twisting of what I was agreeing to disagree with…”…
…Even some who signed on to the Sierra Club’s letter said they could understand why other business felt blindsided…
The complete article is at National Review.
