I went into detail on this a while back as it relates to the Sierra Club. America used to have a strong, bipartisan environmentalist movement. In the mid-1990's, David Gelbaum paid $200 million to them on the condition that they take a hardline pro-migrant stance and deplatform the members that opposed this. The half of the environmentalist movement that disagreed scattered to the four winds, forever turning environmentalism into a partisan issue that would, every 4-8 years, encounter an administration to which it did not have any pre-existing connections. On balance, Gelbaum singlehandedly crippled American environmentalism beyond what any coal industry lobbyist could ever have hoped to achieve. Half of its potential members were alienated, one of its biggest lobbying organizations fell into infighting and purity spiraling, and it was permanently stapled to an unrelated issue that generally polls unfavorably. When I see people advocating that Scott Weiner, infamous among all of the right and a good chunk of the center for SB145[1], be openly touted as representative of AI safety, I worry about history repeating itself. There's lots of outreach that could have happened, and lots of own-goals that didn't have to be scored. 1. ^ A very controversial bill aimed at decriminalizing adults having sex with minors in certain circumstances.