SIERRA CLUB'S PRESIDENT REALLY IN HIS ELEMENT.

Byline: Eric Brazil San Francisco Examiner 

It is a measure of Adam Werbach's sure-footedness and aptitude for political jujitsu that he counts his recent public battering by a hostile congressional panel as a triumph.

Werbach, who at age 24 is in his second one-year term as president of the 600,000-member Sierra Club, is leading a campaign to drain Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border to restore the Colorado River's Glen Canyon.

A House subcommittee on national parks and public land recently summoned Werbach to Washington for three hours of sharp questioning. It's a dumb idea, the congressmen said. Forget it.

Not likely, said Werbach, who believes his adversaries made a big mistake in attacking the Glen Canyon restoration project.

``The opponents wanted to deliver a KO, but it backfired on them. It legitimized the conversation'' and piqued public interest in finding answers to the questions critics raised, he said. Now the real campaign can begin.

Confident, media-hip and politically astute far beyond his years, Werbach has given an energizing jolt to the 105-year-old Sierra Club. His legend-in-the-making figures to spike again with publication of his first book, ``Act Now, Apologize Later,'' just out from Harper Collins/Cliff Street Books.

``I've been giving a lot of sound bites, and I figured it was time I put it all together in a book,'' said Werbach, who makes about 150 speeches a year.

He intends to use the multi-city book tour on which he is about to embark as a forum to talk about Sierra Club issues such as restoration, sustainability and adding muscle and motivation to the environmental movement with neighborhood organizing, or in his words, ``radical localism.''

Werbach was a precocious environmentalist and a leadership prodigy. At 8 he led a petition drive for the ouster of then-Interior Secretary James Watt, and at 13 he founded the Sierra Student Coalition, which registered thousands of voters. He was the Sierra Club's youngest director at 21, and two years later its youngest president, at ease among the nation's movers and shakers. Vice President Al Gore, a pal, is among those to whom Werbach's book is dedicated.

The book is a breezy and engaging mix of autobiography, exhortation, philosophical musings that owe a lot to E.F. Schumacher's ``Small Is Beautiful'' and Gandhi, inspirational stories about grass-roots activists, some strange fairy tales and a question-and-answer session with David Brower, prime mover for American environmentalism and Werbach's hero.

It's a hurry-up work by a young man long on nerve and energy, a self-deprecatory sense of humor, a short attention span and an editor who never quite figured out how to shape the manuscript.

Werbach acknowledges that he was ``born and bred on TV,'' whose ``very mainstream sensibilities'' have an MTV edge. The book validates that claim. It is herky-jerky, dodges in and out of focus, and it entertains.

Werbach is the first to make the Sierra Club presidency a full-time job, subsisting on an annual stipend of $32,500. He has visited most of the club's 65 chapters and invigorated grass-roots volunteerism and boosted youth involvement.

As president of one of the nation's pre-eminent environmental organizations, Werbach is in high demand as a speaker, but he's still got a lot of kid in him, and he has honed a gift for mixing business and pleasure.

For example, he skipped a chance to address the Outdoor Advertising Association in Salt Lake City in August so he could lead a rollicking raft trip down Cataract Canyon on the Colorado River to promote the Glen Canyon restoration campaign. He took a turn at the oars, swam down several rapids and killed a six-pack or two en route.

``He's the most charismatic person we've had in quite a while,'' said Werbach's predecessor, Robbie Cox, a University of North Carolina professor.

``Adam's got a real ability to communicate,'' said Sierra Club Vice President Lois Snedden. ``It's amazing how much respect he has from those of us who are older. He's extremely bright, and he's a good listener.''

He also has a pretty clear-eyed view of how to advance the environmental agenda for the 21st century.

``There is no need to force the language of revolution on a public that largely agrees with the (environmental) agenda,'' he said. ``We can use religion, pop culture, business and politics to bring people together to protect the planet.''

Indeed, the Sierra Club will spring a bit of enviro-pop culture on the nation next Earth Day with the release of ``Rock the Planet,'' a CD produced by Capitol Records, featuring as-yet-unnamed top recording stars.

With such a good case for restoring the planet's health to be made, Werbach thinks it regrettable that ``environmentalists, in a rush to save the natural world, often forget to consider the implications of their actions. Our dedication leads to a self-righteousness that bowls over friends as well as enemies.''

While Werbach has committed himself to the environmental movement for the long haul, he's no Sierra Club careerist. The media life beckons.

``I want to get the message out, and I'm intrigued by the immediacy of TV,'' he said. ``The idea would be to take people out in the wilderness. I want to tell stories in a way that shows the beauty of wilderness. There have been plenty of outdoor programs, but they aren't infused (with) the MTV sensibility.''