Michael Brune (born 24 August 1971) became the youngest executive director of the

Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an American environmental organization with chapters in all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded in 1892, in San Francisco, by preservationist John Muir. A product of the Pro ...

at age 38. The board of directors hired him in January 2010, after Carl Pope stepped down. Michael Brune graduated from

West Chester University West Chester University (also known as West Chester, WCU, or WCUPA, and officially as West Chester University of Pennsylvania) is a public research university located in and around West Chester, Pennsylvania. The university is accredited by the ...

in 1993 with B.S. degrees in both Economics and Finance. Prior to the Sierra Club, Brune was the executive director of the Rainforest Action Network for seven years. He also worked as an organizer for

Greenpeace Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network, founded in Canada in 1971 by a group of Environmental movement, environmental activists. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its biod ...

. In 1999, while working at the Rainforest Action Network, Brune ran a successful campaign to get

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stores to stop purchasing and selling wood from

old-growth forest An old-growth forest or primary forest is a forest that has developed over a long period of time without disturbance. Due to this, old-growth forests exhibit unique ecological features. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Natio ...

s. ''Time'' magazine listed this as its top environmental story of that year. Brune is a regular contributor to the ''

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'', a progressive website founded by

Arianna Huffington Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington (; , ; born July 15, 1950) is a Greek American author, syndicated columnist and businesswoman. She is a co-founder of ''HuffPost'', the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, and the author of fifteen books. She ha ...

, as well as

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. In 2008 he published a book called ''Coming Clean -- Breaking America's Addiction to Oil and Coal''. In 2014 Brune was confirmed as the Hillary Institute of International Leadership's Hillary Laureate in recognition of his work on

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

issues. He was then awarded, jointly with

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's Atossa Soltani, the four yearly Hillary Step prize. In August 2021 the Sierra Club announced that Brune was resigning as executive director, effective as of the end of the year. Following an essay by Brune condemning Sierra Club founder John Muir as a racist, many long-time members strongly questioned his version of history, resigned from the Sierra Club and removed the organization from their estate plans. Similarly, assertions made by Brune during his tenure at the Rainforest Action Network and Sierra Club were eventually addressed and overturned in U.S. federal court in a case labeled as the "legal fraud of the century" by the ''Wall Street Journal''.

References

External links

Biography at the Sierra Club
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brune, Michael Sierra Club executive directors Living people American environmentalists American non-fiction environmental writers 1971 births