Great names were argued over, and unknown ones surfaced. Then the Guardian's science, environment and economics correspondents met to add their own nominations and establish a final 50. Our panel included scientists - former World Bank chief scientist and now the British government's scientific adviser on climate change, Bob Watson, Indian physicist and ecologist Vandana Shiva, Kenyan biologist and Nobel prize-winner Wangari Maathai activists - Guardian columnist George Monbiot and head of Greenpeace International Gerd Leipold politicians - Green party co-leader and MEP Caroline Lucas, and London mayor Ken Livingstone sustainable development commissioner for the UK government Jonathon Porritt and novelist Philip Pullman. To come up with a list of the 50 people most able to prevent the continuing destruction of the planet, we consulted key people in the global environment debate. Who are the politicians most able to force society and industry to do things differently? Where are the green shoots that will get us out of the global ecological mess? The iconic images of 2007 - polar bears stranded, glaciers melting in the Himalayas, forests coming down all over Africa and devastating floods and droughts from Bangladesh to Ghana - may be as nothing to what will happen if people do not take immediate action.īut who are the people who can bring about change, the pioneers coming up with radical solutions? We can modify our lifestyles, but that will never be enough. Some were optimistic that a start had been made some said that the earth's ecological situation was in a far more perilous state than had been thought. There is no agreement on what emission cuts need to be made by when or by whom, and the US is still deeply reluctant to do anything. It was a diplomatic triumph, achieved after rows and high dramas, but it leaves all nations a mighty hill to climb. The agreement was to keep on talking to try to reach a deal by 2010.
Last year ended with the incongruous image of 10,000 politicians, businessmen, activists and scientists from 190 countries emitting vast quantities of greenhouse gases as they flew home from Bali clutching the bare bones of a global agreement on climate change.