From this:

TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy - one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking - to help fund the Club's Beyond Coal campaign. Though the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010 - and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donations - the news raises concerns about influence industry may have had on the Sierra Club's independence and its support of natural gas in the past. It's also sure to anger ordinary members who've been uneasy about the Club's relationship with corporations. "The chapter groups and volunteers depend on the Club to have their back as they fight pollution from any industry, and we need to be unrestrained in our advocacy," Michael Brune, the Sierra Club's executive director since 2010, told me. "The first rule of advocacy of is that you shouldn't take money from industries and companies you're trying to change."

The news of the gas industry donation - which had been kept anonymous until now, as many of Club's gifts from individuals and corporations are - is particularly worrisome for the Sierra Club because its former executive director Carl Pope had been vocal in supporting natural gas as an alternative to coal. Pope - a lifelong Sierra Club staffer who served as executive director and then chairman before stepping down late last year - accompanied Chesapeake's McClendon in 2009 on trips promoting the benefits of natural gas over coal, even as millions of dollars of McClendon's money was flowing to Sierra Club anonymously.

Note that after Pope resigned as executive director he served as chairman for two years. However, he resigned that post also at the end of last year.

See corporatecrimereporter.com/chesapeake02022012.htm for Brune either lying about or being unaware of the donations.

For a past example of Carl Pope and the Sierra Club perhaps promoting policies based on who wrote them checks, see that link. See Sierra Club for more on that story.

If the Sierra Club promotes something - natural gas or massive immigration - follow the money.