Michael Brune, Sierra Club ED to speak in Sonoma April 23rd Earth Day program

Michael Brune is the Executive Director of the national Sierra Club, a position he has held since January 2010. Michael began his environmental work as an organizer for Greenpeace and later served as the Executive Director of Rainforest Action Network (RAN) for seven years. His critically-acclaimed book,  Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal (2010), details a plan for a new green economy that will create well-paying jobs, promote environmental justice, and bolster national security. He also blogs for the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos.

Since Brune became Director of the Sierra Club, the organization has grown to over three million members, and its Beyond Coal campaign has been recognized as one of the most effective efforts in environmental history. The campaign reached a huge milestone when it received a $50 million donation from Bloomberg Philanthropies that went toward helping to phase out coal energy in the U.S. Nearly 180 coal plants have been retired or are scheduled to retire because of the Beyond Coal campaign.

Brune promotes being hard on the issues but soft on the people involved, which is another way of saying that it’s possible to be confrontational and collaborative at the same time. He has won several awards for his environmental work and holds degrees in economics and finance from West Chester University in Pennsylvania.

Brune spoke at the opening session of Praxis Peace Institute’s 2014 conference, “The Economics of Sustainability,” which was held at Fort Mason in San Francisco.