We already knew that environmental groups had a wage gap for men and women reminiscent of the 1960s while engineering, which supposedly needs more women, leads all job sectors in equal pay between genders. 

What is less well known is that they are also far less diverse than the science and engineering groups they vilify. That doesn't just apply to Union of Concerned Scientists and other liberal Political Action Committees, even government environmental agencies have only about 15 percent minorities, though minorities are 40 percent of Americans. 

There is a 1% in environmentalism - rich, liberal, white elites - and then there is everyone else. The 1% fundraises in the abstract about "the wilderness' while the latter worries about core urban areas. A recent analysis by the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works found that the former is used by a Billionaire's Club to to launder money for political activism while the latter ekes out its work with little funding and a whole lot of volunteer effort.

A recent analysis found that of the 3,140 paid staff members at large groups such as the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund, National Wildlife Federation and Earthjustice, 88 percent were white. On the boards that govern the groups, 95 percent of members were white.

None of the largest organizations had a president, vice president or even an assistant/associate director who was an ethnic or racial minority.

We can scramble to talk about unconscious bias - because we must, they are liberals and therefore plain old discrimination can't be invoked like we will if right-wing groups have 88 percent white people. But doing so is doing a disservice to minorities Recruiters for environmental groups even say "they tried to be more inclusive, but minorities lacked the education and skills needed to be effective advocates", which is vilified when a Silicon Valley start-up says the same thing about a complex field like electrical engineering.

Green groups believe minorities aren't even qualified to care about the environment. Maybe they only want them around for diversity effort photo ops.

Source: The State of Diversity in Environmental Organizations: Mainstream NGOs Foundations Government Agencies by Dorceta E. Taylor, Ph.D., University of Michigan School of Natural Resources&Environment

Link: Study: History of cultural bias has led to a lack of diversity at liberal green groups by Darryl Fears, Washington Post