• Wangari Maathai

• Perhaps one of the most influential environmentalists in Africa, Wangari Maathai is a fearless leader, working to improve human health, foster vibrant communities, and encourage women to become economically independent, all with a green angle. She was the first woman from Africa to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and started the Green Belt Movement.

• Despite the recent smear campaign against Van Jones, he is a leader in the environmental community worth watching. He has a knack for linking good jobs to social justice and environmentalism, skilfully connecting the dots and coming up with ambitious and innovative solutions for today’s greatest environmental problems.

• Founder of Better Place, Shai Agassi has a vision to make electric vehicles affordable and mainstream in short order. His solution is to provide battery swap stations that are powered by renewable energy, making personal vehicle ownership virtually emissions-free.

• Founder of Patagonia, a leading-edge, eco-friendly outdoors company, Yvon Chouinard has been experimenting with green concepts for over fifty years.
• Main character in An Inconvenient Truth and advocate for audacious climate goals, Al Gore is naturally one of the most well-recognized faces in the fight against global warming.
• An environmental hero in Canada and beyond, David Suzuki has been talking and writing and filming about the environmental challenges of our time for decades.
• If you’re looking for a humorous slant on the environmental movement, check out Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno for a quirky twist on the issues.
• Bringing the green to Hollywood, Ed Begley Jr. has been talkin’ up eco-friendly living for decades, too. He’s even got his own show, Living with Ed.

Chinese renewable energy Via Flickr - drs2biz

All eyes were on the Chinese-US talks the last week as Obama met with key leaders in the Asian country. With clean energy being one of the biggest issues on the table for the first time in a really public manner, we were all holding our collective breath to see whether anything would get done. And it seems that there is reason to hope!

The US and China, knowing the joint sway they will hold over the Copenhagen talks in January, were eager (or so it appeared) to see how they could influence the talks for good by developing a renewable energy agreement. These the two biggest emitters were able to agree on a broad plan that would help to bring about serious advances in clean energy.

The seven-point plan included the following:

• They US and China will establish a Clean Energy Research Center to facilitate joint research and development of renewable energy technologies. The center will receive both public and private funding to the tune of $150 million over the next five years.
• A joint US-Chinese Electric Vehicles Initiative was announced that will see joint vehicle standards, public education, demonstration projects, and more.
• Together, China and the US will work on an Energy Efficiency Action Plan for buildings, consumer products like appliances, as well as industrial facilities.
• A new US-China Renewable Energy Partnership was launched that will help to support renewable energy deployment and regional partnerships for sharing expertise and best practices.
• “Clean” coal was part of the overall strategy—21^st Century Coal. The two Presidents will work together to develop large-scale carbon capture and storage projects for coal-fired plants.
• Working together, the two countries will explore Shale Gas Resources within China using the experience gained on US soil.
• A new Energy Cooperation Program between China and the US will also be established to leverage private sector resources that will support smart grids, green buildings, combined heat/power, renewable energy, clean coal, and more.

The Tipping Point in the Himalayas

The effects of climate change are being felt around the world due to the burning of fossil fuels and destruction of the world’s forests, but as a general rule the impact of this potentially catastrophic environmental shift will be felt most acutely in developing nations. The people living in the Himalayas perhaps will be some of the first to experience the devastating effects of climate change.

That’s because the Himalayan glaciers are melting faster than originally thought. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has speculated that these glaciers could shrink by as much as 80 percent by the end of our century, the consequences of which will be disastrous for people living in China and India. Experts are predicting that as many as 1.3 billion Asians who live in the shadows of the Himalayas and the rivers that flow in that region will be without water unless something is done to slow climate change.

Activists are urging global leaders attending the Copenhagan Climate Summit to set ambitious goals to reverse the effects of this environmental nightmare. Their hope is that the summit will result in a commitment from developed countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 (their feel a 15-30 percent reduction in emissions by developing nations in the same timeframe is more realistic).