The Environment Agency have published a list of the “Top 100 eco-heroes” as voted by their peers.
“…some of these people aren’t nearly as well-recognised for their contribution to our planet’s welfare as they should be. We hope this poll will go some way towards putting that right.”
Mark Funnell, Environment Agency
Here are the Top 10:
(1) Rachel Carson (1907 – 1964)
Ian Christie, a New Economics Foundation associate, said: “The transition, from seeing the natural world as a mine, dump or playground, to seeing ‘the environment’ as the system in which we are embedded and that sustains us only as long as we respect its boundaries and rhythms, was to a large extent triggered by Silent Spring.”“Her message was .. a call for humility in applying our ingenuity to nature, for ‘prudent concern for the integrity of the natural world that supports all life’, and for ‘full possession of the facts’ to enable open and honest debate about our technological impacts on the Earth.”
(2) E. F. (Fritz) Schumacher (1911– 1977)
“(Schumacher) revolutionised the way we look at economics and provided insights – notably in his 1973 book Small is Beautiful – that have made a genuinely green economics possible. The book, subtitled Economics as if people mattered, sidestepped the main issue of environmental economics – how to price the environment properly in the economic system – and questioned whether the objectives of western economics were realistic or desirable,” said New Economics Foundation associate David Boyle.Small is Beautiful is among the Times Literary Supplement’s 100 most influential books since the war.
(3) Jonathon Porritt
Educated at Eton and Oxford, Porritt started out as a barrister before switching career paths to teach in an inner London school, before eventually becoming an Ecology Party (now the Greens) activist in the 1970s and was later the party’s chairman. He gave up teaching in 1984 to become director of Friends of the Earth. In 1996 he co-founded the Forum for the Future.A director of Friends of the Earth and appointed by Tony Blair as chairman of the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission, Porritt’s latest book Capitalism As If The World Matters, argues that capitalism is the only economic game in town, and says the green movement must forge an “evolved, intelligent and elegant” form of capitalism with sustainability at its heart.
(4) Sir David Attenborough
Environmental campaigner Penney Poyzer, said: “Still something of a sex symbol at 80, the beloved Sir David has, for 50 years, been educating and thrilling millions with his inside knowledge of the natural world. Enthusiastic and curious, he has done more than any other broadcaster to unravel the mysteries of the planet.”(5) James Lovelock
British inventor of the Gaia theory, which holds that the planet’s biosphere works as a single ‘living’ organism, able to manipulate the climate and chemistry of the atmosphere and the oceans to keep them fit for life.“The theory has been hugely influential among environmentalists, religious thinkers and Earth scientists,” said New Scientist Environment Editor Fred Pearce. “Controversial today for arguing that the ‘revenge of Gaia’ on humans will cause environmental mayhem and a population crash, and for advocating nuclear power.”
Lovelock also invented the electron capture detector, a uniquely sensitive device for detecting tiny amounts of pollution, which was first used to find pesticides and ozone-eating CFCs in the atmosphere in the 1960s.
(6) Wangari Maathai
Africa’s ‘tree woman’, Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 and is Kenya’s new environment minister. One of her countries first female scientists, she started the Green Belt Movement more than 30 years planting some 30 million trees across Kenya and cemented the idea that the environment matters to the poor.(7) HRH Prince Charles
“The Prince of Wales’ promotion of locally produced organic food makes him an eco-hero. His multi-million pound Duchy of Cornwall line of products has helped to shape the consumer’s desire for locally produced, high quality, organic foods. It is perhaps his crowning achievement,” said Penney Poyzer.(8) William Morris (1834 – 1896)
Morris’s fame as a designer of wallpaper has somewhat eclipsed his prediction of the problems of the unsustainable nature of industrialisation. His utopian view of a society in harmony with nature still has great resonance for all engaged in trying to make sustainable living the norm for all.(9) Al Gore
Forty-fifth Vice President of the US who ran for presidency in 2000. Now a leading campaigner for global warming, whose documovie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ hit our cinema screens this year and ruffled many a feather in the process.(10) Gro Harlem Brundlandt
At the peak of Thatcherism, here was a woman Prime Minister putting forward an alternative worldview: that of ‘sustainable development’. Her 1987 report ‘Our Common Future’ set out this definition as: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ and laid the ground for the Rio Earth Summit.