'Sierra Club Treasure' Debbie Sease Profiled in High Country News
Photos courtesy of C-SPAN and High Country News.
"When environmentalists needed somebody to stand in front of the cameras on the U.S. Capitol lawn last summer, to connect BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Debbie Sease got the call."
So begins a May 2 profile of Sease, the Sierra Club's Legislative Director, in High Country News by award-winning investigative reporter John Aloysius Farrell. The piece is entitled The most influential conservationist you've never heard of.
"The veteran Sierra Club lobbyist, flanked by two U.S. senators and a House committee chairman, delivered the day's winning sound bite: 'Today we see an ocean burning. We need no further evidence that drilling is dangerous.'
"It was a typical appearance for Sease, a self-described 'desert rat' from New Mexico," Farrell writes. "In this town of titanic egos, a place that former Colorado Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder called 'the Planet of the Guys,' Sease has worked for 30-some years on behalf of land and water, air quality and critters. Today, the 62-year-old is one of the most influential conservationists you've probably never heard of."
We cannot reprint Farrell's insightful, historically edifying, movingly written profile here. But you can read the whole 4,300-word profile by subscribing to High Country News—a 30-day trial subscription is free of charge.
Says Sierra Club Deputy Executive Director Bruce Hamilton, who has worked closely with Sease since the early 1980s: "Debbie is a Sierra Club treasure who has led the Club in protecting millions of acres of wild lands and stopped assaults on the environment in the U.S. Congress for decades. We are deeply indebted to her."
