SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa -- As she joins the national board of directors for the Sierra Club, Donna Buell is drawing on experiences from her Holstein, Iowa, childhood and her present life amid the ecologically rich Iowa Great Lakes.
Now of Spirit Lake, Buell grew up with an appreciation of nature, shaped in part by the pear trees and vegetable garden at her grandparents' farm. As an adult, she veered toward city life and a career as a certified public accountant and attorney. A quest to create more bike trails in San Antonio was her entry into environmental activism, she said, but these days, she's comfortable speaking out in pursuit of environmental goals.
"Climate change trumps everything," Buell said of the present Sierra Club focus.
Moving back to her home state 15 years ago, she got involved with the Okoboji Protective Association, Friends of Lakeside Laboratory and Dickinson County Clean Water Alliance.
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Buell said she's something of an anomaly in environmental advocacy groups, with her background in finance and law. When groups such as the Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club learned she could provide free business expertise, she was quickly brought into leadership roles, she said with a chuckle.
She said she's pleased to join the national board, which means a lot of travel to meetings in Texas and California.
"I was elected by the membership. They read that little 30-word blurb and voted for me, so that is a cool thing," Buell said.
Maureen Horsley, a Sierra Club member who lives in Spencer, Iowa, knows Buell and said she'll be a great board member.
"She, having been brought up on a farm and living in rural Iowa, will bring a Midwest agriculture perspective and understand that Iowans certainly care about the land and environmental issues, because our livelihoods depend on it," Horsley said.
She noted Buell has spoken out about the need to regulate concentrated animal feeding operations to reduce groundwater pollution.
Buell said the Sierra Club is the preeminent voice for the environment, noting that when conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh picked a group that should pay for British Petroleum's massive oil spill, he pointed to the organization.
She said the outcry over the BP spill could lead the environmental movement out of stagnation.
"The only way the environmental movement moves is by crisis. We got the Clean Air Act because that river (Cuyahoga) in Ohio caught fire. This spill in the gulf, if this sweeps up on the shores and creates catastrophe, unfortunately things like that is what gets people's attention," Buell said.
Buell said a summit of about 30,000 Sierra Club members half a decade ago steered the organization toward the push to reduce global warming. In Iowa, the focus is on land issues, such as carbon sinking, and improving water and air quality. The Sierra Club lobbies to influence legislation at the local, state and federal levels, and in Congress, she said, the club is supporting the "watered down" cap-and-trade bill to reduce carbon emissions.
"It just seemed to be a system that worked with mercury, so why wouldn't it work with carbon?" Buell said. "It didn't put anybody out of business, you know, none of this Chicken Little, the sky is falling. Follow the money -- the government's subsidies right now support the monopolies, whether it is Big Ag or Big Oil or Big Coal. You come to Okoboji and there is thousands of windmills. Why aren't our subsidies for plants to build windmill parts in Iowa? Why aren't our subsidies for green energy?"
Buell still has ownership in three Holstein farms she rents to others. She's big into the quest to rebuild the carbon level in soils to where they were before decades of growing crops depleted minerals. She said farmers like to say they are stewards, and they need to prove it with actions.
"We've always known that building the soil back again is the only thing that will sustain farming. Plus, it makes for better crops, you know, (with) the organic matter," Buell said.
