SIERRA CLUB HEAD REACHES OUT TO YOUTHS.

Byline: Yvette Cabrera Daily News Staff Writer

To some extent, Adam Werbach's list of things to do reads like that of any 23-year-old college graduate: decorate apartment, buy car, find affordable medical insurance.

The similarities stop there.

Unlike many of the MTV generation, the Tarzana native schmoozes with President Clinton, hobnobs with legislators on Capitol Hill, and gets communiques from the White House.

It's all part of Werbach's job as president of the Sierra Club, the nation's largest environmental watchdog organization. Now 104 years old, the group boasts a membership of 600,000.

``I do everything a normal 23-year-old would do, but at the same time administer a $50 million organization,'' Werbach said last week after he was reached by telephone at the organization's headquarters in San Francisco.

``I grew up on MTV and Nintendo games, and I understand the media as a message,'' said Werbach. ``So my work basically funnels those techniques for the cause of good, rather than simply selling another crate of aluminum siding.''

Werbach, who will turn 24 Wednesday, easily is the youngest president in the Sierra Club's history. All others were over 40, including naturalist John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club and became its first president at age 54.

Muir's century-old portrait stands watch over Werbach's desk, a reminder of the Sierra Club's long, vaunted history.

``To have him staring over my shoulder - it's quite a trip walking into my office,'' he exclaimed.

As if to highlight Werbach's age, directly across from his desk hangs an Andy Warhol image of Marilyn Monroe in a hot pink outfit.

The contrast of youth and history is not lost on 84-year-old David Brower, a Sierra Club board member who believes Werbach's point of view is necessary at a time when the environmental torch is being passed from one generation to the next.

``We need some young people taking a major role in the environment, because they are going to have to live with the consequences of what the older people have done to the planet,'' Brower said.

``I think that the example set by his existence, his being president, is firing up youth groups all over,'' said Brower, who served 17 years as the Sierra Club's executive director.

At the Audubon Society, Werbach is seen as reflecting an increasing shift in environmental advocacy toward youths.

``He does definitely bring a certain amount of people his own age into the mix. He serves as a definite role model for people in their early 20s and late teens who perhaps are interested in the environmental movement,'' said Audubon spokesman John Bianchi.

Further, the choice of Werbach for president will help advance the Sierra Club's unique brand of advocacy, Bianchi said.

``They have a very aggressive, to-the-barricades kind of approach, and I think he is a very consistent choice with how they work,'' Bianchi said. ``I think he is a good choice.''

So far, Werbach has used his youth to bolster the Sierra Club's appeal.

In his first six months alone, he has traveled about 100,000 miles to speak at high schools and colleges, from the fishing villages in Maine to the Atchafalaya swamps of Louisiana.

``Even though they can't drink, drive or help fight in a war, they can save the area where they live and be a part of the American democracy,'' Werbach said.

``The youth movement is the tugboat that pulls the mother ship around. It's the incubator where new strategies are born,'' he said.

If anything, Werbach hopes to spark the environmental fire that caught him as a youngster.

Werbach's family spent their vacations trekking Yosemite and the Joshua Tree National Park. At 12, he decided to become a vegetarian and the next year got a student membership for the Sierra Club.

One painful memory is of how he could not see the Santa Monica Mountains from his Tarzana home.

``The smog was so bad,'' Werbach said.

Bad air forced the cancellation of his team's T-ball practices several times. ``When kids can't play baseball because the environment is crashing around them, something is very wrong.''

Werbach's environmental enthusiasm long has been evident to his parents Mel, a psychiatrist, and Gail, an educational therapist.

``He puts a tremendous amount of effort and energy into everything he does,'' Mel Werbach said. ``He goes through the night on little or no sleep to be able to accomplish what he does.''

``I thought he would be outstanding - but I didn't expect it at such an early age,'' he said.

It was at North Hollywood's Harvard-Westlake School that Werbach made a first, significant imprint.

During his junior year, Werbach led other students into the creation of a recycling program, one that exists to this day.

By his senior year, Werbach and his mentor and geology teacher Wendy Van Norden wrote the curriculum for what is now an advanced placement environmental science course.

``Every year we have somebody running a club, but I've never seen anyone that could deal as an adult like that and deal with things students are usually afraid to tackle,'' said Van Norden of her former pupil.

As a senior, Werbach founded the Sierra Student Coalition, a national student program with 30,000 members who register voters and establish training program.

His rapid ascension to the Sierra Club's presidency shocked Van Norden, who described Werbach as a pioneer.

``That he was heading in that direction I had no doubt,'' said Van Norden. ``That he would be running something, that he ended up heading something like the Sierra Club doesn't surprise me. That he did it at 23 astonishes me.''

Initially, Werbach feared that Sierra Club board members - the older ones - would treat him differently. But he found that many of them were willing to provide support and mentorship to him.

``I have no delusions, I don't know all the answers, I have not been on this Earth that long,'' Werbach said. ``But the lines have blurred a lot (between young and old), which is what's really exciting about the Sierra Club.''

One of the most exciting parts of the job for Werbach has been public speaking and working with members of Congress to push the Sierra Club's agenda.

Last September found Werbach standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon with Clinton. He was invited to attend a ceremony at which the president was signing a pact to preserve 1.7 million acres of Utah wilderness.

Werbach vividly remembers lunch with Clinton.

``I just spent an hour telling him about the things he needed to do,'' Werbach said. ``It just seems very few people have the president's ear. I had to take the opportunity on behalf of our members to do it.''

Although Werbach is content with the work he's done at the Sierra Club so far - 70 percent of the politicians endorsed by the organization were elected this November - he acknowledges there is a long way to go.

``Some environmentalists are dour and say the sky is falling and world is going to end,'' Werbach said. ``I know that if I go back to my home in L.A., I can see those mountains and kids can have T-ball practice because people working together have actually made a difference.''

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PHOTO (color) Sierra Club President Adam Werbach, 23, is crossing generational lines for his cause.

Associated Press