Celebrating Our Eco-Heroes

When Vanity Fair announced its special "green issue," focusing on the environment and those who fight on its behalf, it seemed a watershed moment, a sign that talk of global warming has officially broken into the mainstream. With ample scientific evidence that clearly shows the negative impact human beings are having on the planet, it's long past time we started asking how we can stop it, rather than naively pondering whether it's going on at all. This Earth Day, we can all celebrate this shift in focus -- and the people who have fueled it.

But the magazine focused almost exclusively on the rich and powerful figureheads of the enviro movement, leaders like Al Gore, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Julia Roberts. In doing so, Vanity Fair missed the very people who offer the most hope in solving the problems we're facing: the grassroots activists and leaders that push environmentalism ever forward.

When we asked readers to nominate their grassroots eco-heroes, we received hundreds of names. It's a testament to the number of people, often uncelebrated, who continue to fight for our planet. It is one thing to champion a cause, another to live it. And while Julia Roberts and George Clooney look great in green on the Vanity Fair cover, these nine eco-heroes are responsible for making our entire planet look better and greener.

Rebecca Aldworth, Humane Society

Rebecca Aldworth (Credit: HSUS/Brian Skerry)

Rebecca Aldworth is director of Canadian Wildlife Issues for the Humane Society of the United States. For the past ten years, she has campaigned to stop the commercial seal hunt in Canada. Every year, she serves as a witness to the hunt, bringing journalists, parliamentarians and scientists to observe the savage competition, which routinely involves skinning the animals alive. Aldworth's tireless efforts to bring the slaughter of seals into the public eye have paid off. This year, Greenland stopped its trade in Canadian sealskins -- no small feat considering that over the past two years it has been the recipient of some 90,000 skins. Aldworth is devoted to finding constructive solutions to end sealing by working to create compensation programs to dissuade fishermen from the practice. In addition to Greenland, Mexico, Belgium, Croatia and Luxembourg have all recently taken steps to ban their trade in seal products.

These steps are critical to ending a practice that many aren't even aware is still going on. As Aldworth explained, back in the 1970s and 80s when this campaign was at its height globally, the seals became the symbol of the animal protection and environmental movements. In the 1980s, when the EU banned the import of newborn seal skins, the victory "turned us from protesters into the politically powerful. We changed from a movement that stood in the streets and didn't really effect policy to one that convinced governments around the world to take action." But in the 1990s, Canada's federal government subsidized the return of the hunt. Despite the setback, Aldworth is optimistic about the future, noting that she believes this may be the last year we have to see the slaughter of baby seals in Canada. "This is a victory we simply have to win," she notes, "and I think we will win it."

Janine Blaeloch, Western Lands Project

Janine Blaeloch

On paper, a land trade where the government takes in 33,000 acres for public use in exchange for just 7,200 acres of national forest seems like a win-win, right? Not if the company that's offering up the land is paper giant Weyerhauser. According to Janine Blaeloch, the founder and director of the Western Lands Project, the deal would have given up thousands of acres of native forests in exchange for "rocks and stumps." This proposed deal spurred the creation of the Western Lands Project, a Seattle-based nonprofit whose aim is simple: to keep public lands public.