I have no problem with anybody living however they want. I have a great deal of respect for people who get back to nature and live a rustic, self-sufficient life. The only problem is that mos tof us can't do this: the world is over populated.

So, the only solution that will work, won't be hair shirtism (nobody will go for it, just look at China) and instead it needs to be engineering for a new future. This means taking everything - from cars to appliances to clothng to computers, neighbourhoods - and instead build them to fit with the environment and use as little energy as possible.

I have seen this work many times. All my appliances are energy efficient - and hey it's cheaper. I still have nice clean clothes.

I would have take difference with some of the green heroes. Canada, for one, is not a green hero. The country produces more greenhouse gases per capita than the US. All its major cities have become severely polluted in the 1990s. Acid rain has destroyed many lakes. Canadians live in some of the biggest and most energy gobbling houses in the world. They also drive all the time in cars. They are worst example of suburban waste. Europeans and asians are far better examples. Both are better resouces use because resources are expensive - they have no choice.

As for green activists, I have known many over the years. These guys and gals are the worst hypocrites. They all jet around the world constantly, going to this social forum or that UN conference. They are not a good roll model. I have also seen the consequences of their projects in the developing world: they don't work.

The only people who have made any difference out there is the animal conservationists. Animal conservation is easily quantifiable and so they have been able to stem the slaughter.

But greenie activists in the past twenty years have at best created a very nice situation for themselves.

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The nine profiled all seem great. Like 'em. Love 'em. But know what? I'm still curious about the list of hundreds of nominees. The ones not so flashy, the ones who do the day to day work in small ways, and the ones that we can most relate to.

How about it? Could you link to a page with all of the nominees and the descriptions from the nominators?

merci beaucoup....

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Absolutely ASTOUNDING! Movie stars at the top of the list? We are abysmally NOT PAYING ATTENTION AS CITIZENS! What about Ralph Nader? Does America's collective memory only go back 20 years at most with regards to just about everything? This man SHOULD HAVE BEEN PRESIDENT IN THE LAST ELECTION let alone at the top of your "contest list for eco-heroes." His TV air time was limited to 4 a.m. ONLY! He had a web site TELLING AMERICA EXACTLY WHAT HIS INTENTIONS WERE should he be elected. Yet America chose only to whine about a debate between a babboon, Bushbaby, and Kerry. Did either of them give Americans a CLUE as to what their intentions were? The goddamn press IGNORED HIM COMPLETELY. Everyone ASSumed Nader would know nothing about politics, diplomacy or how to be Commander-in-Chief of the military. As it turns out, AMERICANS were ASSES for ASSuming so. We SPIRITUALLY BRUTALIZED a true American son! Right now, having read your readers poll, am also disgusted with the intelligent half of America as well and not "just" the astoundlingly ignorant, fascist RABID RIGHT. I WILL NEVER FORGIVE MY FELLOW AMERICANS FOR THE SHABBY DISREGARD FOR A CONSUMMATE AMERICAN HERO. SHAME ON US, AMERICA! SHAME ON US ALL!

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this list is: What about Vandana Shiva? Arundhati Roy? The Zapatistas? The environmental activists of the Niger Delta?

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Amen.

I want to put in a plug for the eco heroes who are battling our national eco illiteracy and science deficit in the classroom. A group I work with did a newsletter for National Environmental Education Week featuring a handful of the hundreds who are on the front lines every week in under-resourced NYC schools - free download at Go Wild NYC.

Any other cities working to boost the people who are duking it out on kids' behalf? Would be nice to have a national network . . .

Jessica Marshall
jessica@eyecandybooks.com

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It is rather telling that the above individuals, who all seem to be nice folks, are viewed as heros - something out of the ordinary run of human behavior. Yet their actions are those of sane intelligent people who encounter various problems and respond to the best of their abilities.

If this is to be viewed as exceptional human behavior then we have a real problem. What constitutes normal human behavior?

Let's consider two issues (and corporate viewpoints) that involve some of our heros: forestry (natural resource extraction) and agribusiness (a huge petrochemical market in herbicides, pesticides and fuels, and an area of active intellectual property struggle involving gene patenting).

Sustaining healthy diverse ecosystems should be the primary consideration for a healthy society that plans to be around for some time (this would be a 'conservative' value, certainly). Absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen is one example; this is a service that the Amazon rainforest plays a large role in. Wild plants often contain insect-resistance genes that can be rebred into agricultural strains (corn varieties are a good example of this). There are many other critical reasons to maintain such 'ecosystem services'.

According to 'rational economic theory' such considerations have no place in forestry and agribusiness corporate strategy. CEOs and Directors are looking at profit margins on a quarterly basis, and not much else. There is a lack of built-in long-term thinking, and no reward for it either. This is what economics schools call normal - short-sighted greed with disastrous long-term consequences. One small step away from this view would be to tie investors tightly to their investments - and eventually introduce the notion that the planet is our investment - our only real future.

Try building a life-support system on the Moon or on Mars and you'll quickly realize the value of 'ecosystem services'. Until we can think of our heros as normal people, we are in for continuing serious problems.

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the plutocrats and megacorporations pay good money to generate propaganda that is used to shape and mold the core planks of a PseudoLeft, a false left that is focused on race and gender identity politics, focused on horserace GOP-vs-Dem politics, focused on environmental issues, etc.

The last thing the plutocrats and megacorporations wants is a TRUE Left, one that is focused on populist economics issues that unite the lower 70% of Americans. THat TRUE Left would be focused on progressive taxation, universal healthcare, cutting immigration (legal and illegal) so as to improve the labor-supply vs labor-demand ratio, and other concerns, such as building nuclear power plants for cheaper energy. Also, low cost college, low cost childcare.

In other words, all the things that western europeans have and we do not have.

THAT is populist economics. THat is the TRUE Left. What we have here on Alternet and other pseudoleft outlets is a platform that is what the rich and the megacorporations (the overclass) want as a Left, a left that is tame. THe Overclass created this left for you.

The overclass does this primarily by funding nonprofit foundations that create propaganda. Read Joan Roelofs's book THE MASK OF PLURALITY. THere are many detailed reviews on that book online.

If you want to make this country more like Europe, you have to engage in an information war. Electoral politics is not true politics. That is just the aftermath of true politics. Real politics is takes place through cultural indoctrination and subtle propaganda.

if you want to make America more like Europe, you have to put ideas and scripts into people's heads. This is done by sounds and images and words. But it has nothing to do with GOP vs Dems.

You have to communicate ideas about the differences between Western Europe and America with respect to progressive taxation and healthcare and the welfare state and education and the military. YOu have to paint a picture of history that puts this all in context with a leftist populist slant.

Do you see alternet or mother jones or The Nation doing this? Very little. Mostly you have race and gender politics or horse race politics or enviro-politics.
Do you understand why, now?

If you want to make a change, you have to focus on ideology transmission. And all you have to do is concentrate on Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida Voters. If you would organize to create good subtle propaganda directed towards these voters, the presidential candidates would have to slant their campaigns towards the ideologies that you disseminated. It is all about the sheer volume and quality of ideological scripts that are being propagated.

But the left is not even in the game. THe GOP is all over the place with their propaganda aimed at the largest single voting blocs--white males, blue collar whites, rural whites. And the PseudoLeft is all over the place with their nonprofit foundation funded Pseudo Left propaganda.

Why not organize to create ideological propaganda oriented towards populist leftist economic issues, bread and butter issues, and target these particular voters.

I know why. But I aint say it or I will get banned.

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I tried to enter a candidate and I never even received a confirmation that the entry was successful--to the contrary kept receiving an error telling me that I MUST (in red) include my e-mail address...which I did. Was my entry successful? I don't know.

I find it surprising and incredibly ironic that Alternet kept (during the voting process) and is keeping the list of candidates hidden. In addition, the voting process was implied, but never explicitly explained, meaning that there was NO accountability in who got chosen, why, and by what margins...hmmm...Alternet...already getting lax with democratic principals? And you're not even that powerful yet!

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I agree with the poster who bursts the bubble of soft left politics. I am going to tell you what the left has become, and then I will tell you what is wrong with that.

The left has degenrated into a neat gimmick to carve a niche in the free market, media-mad economy. Rather than being oppressed (as would be the case in authoritrian countries) soft left thinkers are quickly absorbed into the mainstream and soon become wealthy or at least very comfortable.

A classic example of this would be Naomi Klein. It is all very glib.

The free market economy doesn't mind this sort of left. The free market economy is foremost, thirsty for ideas and gimmicks. Anything will do.If gay black cowboys are a market, somebody will mak gay black cowboy clothing. It is what is great about the free market economy.

But this means that soft left think they are making a difference. They look at their bank accounts, hey see their faces plastered on billboards everywhere, and think wow!, the revolution is just around the corner. But the only revolution going on is when they get the decorators around to switch to the latest neat look from Ikea.

Hard left issues are different. They worry about real things like how many hours in the day, what the pay and conditions are, do you have a job, somewhere to live that is dignified. Soft left worry that Mexican illegal migrants are being given free language lessons and that their children have daycare. They don't address the fact they are depressing wages. This is because it ain't their wages that are going down. Illegals don't get to compete for jobs like newspaper columnist, or best-selling author, or professor, or doctor. Interesting huh?

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I'd like to nominate the founders and the members of the high profile extremist groups that have kept environmentalism in the news, and therefore in our social conciousness. The way I figure it, while organizations like Greenpeace kept reminding us of the major changes we need to be working on as a culture, and a (human) race, individuals started to slowly change their ways within those cultrues. How long would it have taken us to get bottle laws and recycling programs into our states? Anyone remember when the grumps in your office claimed that paper recycling would never take on because it wasn't cost effective enough? Sure, vehicle hybridization needed a Republican political push, but the framework for doing so was already in place from the environmental movement.

Environmentalism has been a true grass-roots movement, and one whose participants can be proud of. How many of us chnaged one or more of our behaviors due to a friend or neighbor who was more environmentally concious? I can think of many such people in my own life. Kudos to them.

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The people named in this article are leaders of organizations and thus, by some degree of definition, public figures and public spokespeople. The person who faithfully recycles and makes purchases to limit having to recycle or toss away is not a public person, cannot be quantified by an Internet search, and may not appreciate having his or her name included in an article. Thus, unlike some of the posters above, I am neither surprised nor perturbed by the people selected. However, I do agree that AlterNet should identify why these people were selected over other nominees.

It is very difficult to be "green" all the time in this country. Try living in an apartment without recycling while city officials receive awards for having a wonderful rcycling program for people living in single-family homes. Try getting a municipally-contracted trash service to collect recycables when the city council is unable to have any authority of the company's actions. Try keeping a smile and an attitude that it is all for the Earth when people who have been polluting for years are given tax breaks or other significant financial incentives to reduce their waste stream production when their neighbors have been doing the right thing for years without any financial incentive or other recognition. Indeed, ridicule is often how people who attempt to modify the consumption culture, in their own lives and in their own surroundings, are frequently greeted.

We need both the life-sized heros who carry their cloth bags with them to have on hand for any occasion just as we need the heros who choose to make a career out of doing bigger deeds to help balance humans and the rest of the planet.

Have a Happy Earth Day - all year long.

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They run the nearby recycling center. The funds are used to spread the word about the dangers to our planet. The center is staffed by students (Paid. Sure. For sorting through yucky cans and broken bottles and helping change the results of folks who don't yet know the difference between cardboard and cereal packaging. And hauling off the stuff the jerks leave who think it's a dump. Paid, but not enough.)

It adds up to nothing more than a gesture. But it's been there a whole lot longer than the city's coded trash barrels for sorting. And it led the way to the container tax that keeps our street people in cigarettes, wine, and other assorted condiments.

A drop in the bucket, to be sure. What's that they say about the "long journey"? Oh yeah, it begins with a first step.

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Obviously, the biggest struggle is to awaken the slumbering SUV crowds out of their torpor to realize how they are connecting with the world out there, a world that few seem to know of or assign much importance. The world beyond work and home.

I'd like to salute all those at The Living Desert in Palm Desert and Indian Wells.

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Jessica,

Check out earthteam.net , and environmental network for teens, teachers, and youth leaders.

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I submitted Mr. Green as a possible candidate for 'Eco-Heroes'... No vote was held, so the Green Gonzo Group never made it in this article...., however I recommend people enlighten themselves and visit http://www.mrgreen.biz anyways. You might be suprised what kind of situation is really affecting the "Hero" today.

Happy Earth Day, Lets Stop F*cking Her Up!

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Only two out of 10 eco-heroes were men. Isn't that something!

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100 Vanity Faire eco-heroes and all we can come up with or recognize is NINE! Alternet needs to list all the choices from its readers and give those out there putting their bodies and convictions where their mouths are. Some of them may be our neighbors and we'd like to thank them or work with them on a grass roots level. I look forward to seeing more real eco-heroes on your site in the future.

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Thanks for all your comments. Given the short timeline that we executed this project in (5 days from start to finish), it's unavoidable that we missed some important nominees. The nine leaders above are the activists who got the most votes in our survey.

Some of the other notable names are:
Alice Waters, Chez Panisse/Edible Schoolyard; Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd; Vandana Shiva, author and activist; David Suzuki, Suzuki Foundation; Karen Pickett, Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters; Wangari Maathai, Green Belt Movement; Julia Buttefly Hill, Circle of Life; Dr. James Hansen, NASA ; Richard Gienger, Trees Foundation; Suzan Clausen, Surfrider - USA; Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute; and Judi Bari, Earth First!.

Thanks again to everyone for your participation, and be sure to check out the 2006 Goldman Environmental Prize winners, announced today in San Francisco.

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