Yes it certainly was a low point for the Sierra Club who have proven unable to grasp the problem of climate change. They are stuck in the Boomer mindset that environmentalism means recycling cans and bottles.
The good thing (at least wrt to the posted s article) is that the majority of people like to save money, and solar offers a way to save money. So the forces of economics and good policy at the state level will make more solar and storage projects happen.
It would seem that you are trying to use environmentalism as cover for other views that you have ("entrenched interests"? Who cares who cuts down a forest, and if they are entrenched or not, if the forest ends up cut down?)
I think you should take a hard look at where your personal interests overlap with the mission of the Sierra Club.
In SF at least, Sierra Club priorities are (at least facially) decidedly more “anti-development” than “pro-environment”.
How does one explain their opposition to SB 827 [1] through an environmental lens? If we don’t build more density somewhere then we inevitably get more sprawl.
To add some meldodrama, how many people must die in the streets before we move the lever to help our fellow human? To some, “saving the Earth” can justify any amount of human suffering.
[1] https://www.ethanelkind.com/sierra-club-now-opposes-one-of-t...
The EPA doesn’t place livestock as the leading cause of GHG.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
Livestock are an important source (just not the most important). Documentaries with an obvious angle also purposely edit their footage to cast their villains in an unflattering light.
There’s also a good blog post by the Union of Concerned Scientists about this very claim.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/doug-boucher/cowspiracy-movie-review
Although, environmental destruction and pollution, water use, pretty high. So it was funny to see a major face of Sierra Club being totally oblivious to it.
For me, personally, what also matters is the relative ranking of impacts. I did some research into this and here are the top personal contributors to GHG emissions (presumably for a person living in a developed country).
(All figures in tons CO2 per year)
Have one fewer child: 58.6
Live car free: 2.4
One less transatlantic flight: 1.6
Buy green energy: 1.47
EV to car free: 1.15
Plant-based diet: 0.82
etc...
The interesting thing is that based on this analysis, on average our transportation usage far dominates the plant-based diet aspect.
Popular press (with some interesting follow-on thoughts about how most of the emissions are produced by the wealthy). https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/7/14/1596354...
original paper here: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541/...
They say cattle respiration should not be counted because what CO2 comes from cattle respiration would have come from soil respiration.
But it seems to me that the two operate on vastly different timescales : according to wikipedia, "Carbon stored in soil can remain there for up to thousands of years before being washed into rivers by erosion or released into the atmosphere through soil respiration."
So it would seem to make sense to count cattle respiration as added CO2.