Act Now Apologize Later
A book published by Harper-Collins in 1997 during my Sierra Club presidency. It laid out new strategies for environmental activism and ways to engage younger generations in the movement.
I wrote 'Act Now, Apologize Later' in 1997, during my term as president of the Sierra Club. I was in my early twenties, and the title was only half a joke — my generation's instinct was to move first and ask permission afterward, and I thought the environmental movement needed more of that.
The book argued that environmentalism could not survive as a cause for an aging membership and a settled set of tactics. It had to reach young people where they actually were, treat them as organizers rather than future donors, and take risks that made the establishment uncomfortable.
Some of it I would write differently today. But the core argument — that movements either renew themselves or calcify — is one I still believe, and it runs through almost everything I have done since.