In a recent letter, it was suggested the Sierra Club are quasi-environmentalists. I would have to disagree.

John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, loved nature so much he thought that to avoid marring the landscape American Indians should be taken out of the wilderness and relocated to camps. He also vehemently opposed the reckless exploitation of natural resources.

Although the Sierra Club is carrying on Muir's idea to displace people and make lives miserable, they have dramatically deviated from Muir's original idea, to preserve the land and not use its natural resources recklessly.

Beautiful rolling hills in Kansas such as the unique and wonderful hills on the southern end of the Ellis Road, the Yocemento area, the Flint Hills are just a few of the reckless targets in Kansas where the Sierra Club is encouraging the planting of hundreds of windscrapers to produce electricity. Land that has been watched over by Mother Nature and native Americans for thousands of years and responsible farmers and ranchers for a couple of hundred years could be forever destroyed in a couple of hours with a Sierra Club-fueled¬ bulldozer.

The current depreciated Sierra Club, unlike the club where I was a donor a few decades ago, is now a tunnel visioned, arm-twisting conglomerate of well-paid attorneys and political lobbyists hired to rid the world of coal-fired electrical generation plants and to delude this country into accepting expensive, invasive, foreign dependent and inadequate forms of electrical energy sources.

Financed in part by corporations such as the steel and natural gas industries, wind farm developers and others cashing in on this energy deception, the Sierra Club can handsomely pay lobbyist all over the country to persuade simple-minded public officials that wind farms will create an economic boon, a few jobs, and a public inspired by their brilliant leadership in reducing pollution.

Many years ago in an effort to eliminate mountain bikes, the Sierra Club's board of directors wrote to a Californian governing agency, "Mountain biking is bad role modeling, because children who see people on mountain bikes learn (non-verbally) that rough treatment of natural areas is OK."

The leaders of today's Sierra Club must have seen way too many bikes and are acting as predicted, as now the land is indeed enduring rough treatment, an absolute shameful display of environmental irresponsibility. Then, bikes were bad; now, bulldozers, giant power shovels, cranes, millions of tons of cement, and moving skyscrapers are good.

I disagree with the premise that the Sierra Club is a quasi-environmentalists group. The term, "environmentalist," can't be, in any way, be construed to describe their environmentally destructive behavior.

I'm sure John Muir would be very ashamed. Although, he would be proud of real environmentalists in Kansas, the farmers and ranchers who treasure their land, who can resist the Sierra-sponsored carrots and will continue to allow all Americans to greatly benefit from the beauty of western Kansas.

An interesting note: The Worldwide Institute, an environmental research group, has determined that unless we constrict our use, the earth's iron ore supply will only last 60 more years.

Flint Campbell

Brownell