Portal:Environment/Selected biography

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Selected biographies list

Selected biography/1           view - talk - edit - history

John Muir (April 21, 1838 – December 24, 1914) was one of the first modern preservationists. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, and wildlife, especially in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, were read by millions and are still popular today. His direct activism helped to save the Yosemite Valley and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is now one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States. His writings and philosophy strongly influenced the formation of the modern environmental movement.

Selected biography/2           view - talk - edit - history

David Suzuki is a Canadian science broadcaster and environmental activist. Since the mid 1970s, Suzuki has become known for his TV and radio series and books about nature and the environment. He is best known as host of the popular and long-running CBC Television science magazine, The Nature of Things, seen in syndication in over 40 nations. He is well known for criticizing governments for their lack of actions to protect the environment.

Selected biography/3           view - talk - edit - history

Ernst Haeckel (February 16, 1834 — August 9, 1919), also written von Haeckel was a prominent German biologist and naturalist. He named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology, including phylum, phylogeny, ecology and the kingdom Protista.

Selected biography/4           view - talk - edit - history

Sir Nicholas Stern, FBA (born 22 April 1946) is a British economist and academic. In July 2005, he was appointed to conduct reviews on the economics of climate change and of development, which led to the publication of the Stern Review. Stern describes climate change as an economic externality and therefore addressing this externality should allow market forces to develop low carbon technologies.

Selected biography/5           view - talk - edit - history

Sir David Frederick Attenborough is one of the world's best known broadcasters and naturalists. His career as the respected face and voice of British natural history programmes has endured more than 50 years and is widely considered one of the pioneers of the nature documentary. He is best known for writing and presenting the eight "Life" series. In 2007, Attenborough presented "Sharing Planet Earth", the first programme in a series of documentaries entitled Saving Planet Earth.

Selected biography/6           view - talk - edit - history

June Haimoff is an English environmentalist who settled in Dalyan in southwestern Turkey (Muğla Province) after her retirement and has launched a successful campaign for the conservation of loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) which lay their eggs in the İztuzu Beach in Dalyan. She relates the struggle and the victory for the preservation of these species in her book titled Kaptan June and the Turtles published in 1997.

Selected biography/7           view - talk - edit - history

Jonathon Espie Porritt, CBE, (born 6 July 1950) is a British environmentalist and writer. Porritt appears frequently in the media, writing in magazines, newspapers and books, and appearing on radio and television regularly.

In the 1970s, Porritt was the driving force behind the Ecology Party. As chairman of the UK Ecology Party (now the Green Party) from 1978 to 1984, he presided over changes that made the party much more prominent in elections. Under his stewardship, membership grew from a few hundred to around 3,000. In 1984 his first book, Seeing Green, was published. In this year he also gave up teaching to become Director of Friends of the Earth in Britain, a post he held until 1990.

Selected biography/8           view - talk - edit - history Francisco Alves Mendes Filho (December 15, 1944 – December 22, 1988), also known as Chico Mendes, was a Brazilian rubber tapper, unionist and environmental activist. He fought to stop the logging of the Amazon Rainforest to clear land for cattle ranching, and founded a national union of rubber tappers in an attempt to preserve their profession and the rainforest that it relied upon. He was murdered in 1988 by ranchers opposed to his activism.

“ At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realise I am fighting for humanity. ”

On 22 December 1988, Mendes was assassinated by gunshot at his Xapuri home. In December, 1990 rancher Darcy Alves Pereira and his son Darli Alves were sentenced to 19 years in prison for their part in Mendes' assassination.

Selected biography/9           view - talk - edit - history

Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 — April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist and nature writer whose landmark book, Silent Spring, is often credited with having launched the global environmental movement. Silent Spring had an immense effect in the United States, where it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy. She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Selected biography/10           view - talk - edit - history

Marjory Stoneman Douglas (April 7, 1890 - May 14, 1998) was an eminent American conservationist and writer.

She was most associated with battles to save the Florida Everglades from draining and over development, during which times she organized benefits and various marches. Her book The Everglades: River of Grass, written in 1947, has gone through numerous editions. It galvanized people to protect the Everglades. At the age of 78, she founded Friends of the Everglades, an organization which is still at the forefront of Florida conservation.

Selected biography/11           view - talk - edit - history

Gro Harlem Brundtland (born April 20, 1939) is a Norwegian politician, diplomat, and physician, and an international leader in sustainable development and public health. She is a former Prime Minister of Norway, and has served as the Director General of the World Health Organization. She now serves as a Special Envoy on Climate Change for the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

She is most famous for chairing the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), widely referred to as the Brundtland Commission, developing the broad political concept of sustainable development in the course of extensive public hearings that were distinguished by their inclusiveness and published its report Our Common Future in April 1987. The Brundtland Commission provided the momentum for the 1992 Earth Summit/UNCED, that was headed by Maurice Strong, who had been a prominent member of the Brundtland Commission. The Brundtland Commission also provided momentum for Agenda 21.

Selected biography/12           view - talk - edit - history

George Monbiot (born January 27, 1963) is a journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist in the United Kingdom who writes a weekly column for The Guardian newspaper. He is on the advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazine.

Selected biography/13           view - talk - edit - history

Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist. Gore served in the United States House of Representatives (1977–85) and the United States Senate (1985–93) representing Tennessee. From 1993 to 2001, he was the forty-fifth Vice President of the United States, under Bill Clinton. Gore is currently an author and environmental activist. He has founded a number of non-profit organizations, including the Alliance for Climate Protection. Gore starred in the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Together with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Gore is a recipient of Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. In 2007 he was named a runner-up for Time's 2007 Person of the Year.

Selected biography/14           view - talk - edit - history

Arne Dekke Eide Næss (born January 27, 1912) is widely regarded as the foremost Norwegian philosopher of the 20th century, and is the founder of deep ecology. His philosophical work focused on Spinoza, Buddhism and Gandhi. Næss combined his ecological vision with Gandhian nonviolence and on several occasions participated in direct action. In 1970, together with a large number of demonstrators, he chained himself to rocks in front of Mardalsfossen, a waterfall in a Norwegian fjord, and refused to descend until plans to build a dam were dropped. Though the demonstrators were carried away by police and the dam was eventually built, the demonstration launched a more activist phase of Norwegian environmentalism.

Næss had been a minor political candidate for the Norwegian Green Party and in 1939 he was the youngest person to be appointed full professor at the University of Oslo and the only professor of philosophy in the country at the time. In 1996, he won the Swedish Academy Nordic Prize, known as the 'little Nobel'. In 2005 he was decorated as a Commander with Star of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav for socially useful work.

Selected biography/15           view - talk - edit - history

Paul Ralph Ehrlich (born May 29, 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is currently the Bing Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Kansas. He is a renowned entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera (butterflies). He is also well known as a researcher and author on the subject of human overpopulation notably for his 1968 book The Population Bomb. In the years since many of Ehrlich's predictions have proven incorrect, but he stands by his general thesis that the human population is too large and is a direct threat to human survival and the environment of the planet.

Selected biography/16           view - talk - edit - history Donella "Dana" Meadows (March 13, 1941 Elgin, Illinois, USA - February 20, 2001, New Hampshire) was a pioneering American environmental scientist, teacher and writer. She is known as lead author of Limits to Growth, a 1972 book modelling the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite resource supplies.

Selected biography/17           view - talk - edit - history

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American visionary, designer, architect, poet, author, and inventor.

Throughout his life, Fuller was concerned with the question "Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?" Considering himself an average individual without special monetary means or academic degree, he chose to devote his life to this question, trying to find out what an individual like him could do to improve humanity's condition that large organizations, governments, or private enterprises inherently could not do.

Fuller published more than 30 books, inventing and popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetic. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, the best known of which is the geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres.

Selected biography/18           view - talk - edit - history

Amory Bloch Lovins (November 13, 1947 - ) is Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a MacArthur Fellowship recipient (1993), and author and co-author of many books on renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Lovins has worked professionally as an environmentalist and an advocate for a "soft energy path" for the United States and other nations. He has promoted energy-use and energy-production concepts based on conservation, efficiency, the use of renewable sources of energy, and on generation of energy at or near the site where the energy is actually used.

Lovins has provided expert testimony in eight countries and more than 20 US states, briefed 19 heads of state, and published 29 books (including Winning the Oil Endgame, Factor Four with Hunter Lovins and Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, and Natural Capitalism with Hunter Lovins and Paul Hawken).

Selected biography/19           view - talk - edit - history

Lester Russel Brown (born March 28, 1934) is a United States environmental analyst, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. BBC Radio commentator Peter Day calls him "one of the great pioneer environmentalists."

Brown is the author or co-author of over 50 books on global environmental issues and his works have been translated into more than forty languages. His most recent book is World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse (2011). Brown emphasizes the geopolitical effects of fast-rising grain prices noting that "the biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries," and one that could "bring down civilization".

The recipient of 26 honorary degrees and a MacArthur Fellowship, Brown has been described by the Washington Post as "one of the world's most influential thinkers". As early as 1978, in his book The Twenty-Ninth Day, he was already warning of "the various dangers arising out of our manhandling of nature... by overfishing the oceans, stripping the forests, turning land into desert." In 1986, the Library of Congress requested his personal papers noting that his writings "have already strongly affected thinking about problems of world population and resources," while president Bill Clinton has suggested that "we should all heed his advice."

Selected biography/20           view - talk - edit - history James B. Harkin, also known as the Father of National Parks, was a Canadian-born journalist turned bureaucrat with a passion for conservation but also widely renowned for his commodification of the Canadian landscape. Harkin was able to acquire an appointment to be the first commissioner of the Dominion Parks Branch in 1911. During his career, Harkin oversaw the establishment of national parks that include Elk Island, Mount Revelstoke, Point Pelee, Kootenay, Wood Buffalo, Prince Albert, Riding Mountain, Georgian Bay Islands and Cape Breton Highlands. The creation of the Wood Buffalo National Park sparked huge debate with local indigenous groups and the rippling effects of that debate are still being dealt with today.

Selected biography/21           view - talk - edit - history

Elinor Ostrom (August 7, 1933 – June 12, 2012), an American political economist, was awarded the 2009 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for "her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons". She was the first, and to date, the only woman to win the prize in this category.

In 1973, she co-founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. Examining the use of collective action, trust, and cooperation in the management of common pool resources, her approach to public policy, known as the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework, has been considered sufficiently distinct to be thought of as a separate school of public choice theory.

Her most famous research focuses on how humans interact with ecosystems to maintain long-term sustainable resource yields. She conducted her field studies on the management of pasture by locals in Africa and irrigation systems management in villages of western Nepal. Her work has considered how societies have developed diverse institutional arrangements for managing natural resources and avoiding ecosystem collapse in many cases, even though some arrangements have failed to prevent resource exhaustion. Her work emphasized the multifaceted nature of human–ecosystem interaction and argues against any singular "panacea" for individual social-ecological system problems.

Selected biography/22           view - talk - edit - history

Wangari Muta Maathai (1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011) was a Kenyan environmental and political activist. She was educated in the United States at the University of Pittsburgh and at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. In the 1970s, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 1986, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, and in 2004 became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for "her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace." Maathai was an elected member of the National Assembly of Kenya and served as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki, from 2003 through 2005. She was an Honorary Councillor of the World Future Council.

Nominations

Feel free to add top or high importance Environment-related biographies to the above list. Other Environment-related biographies may be nominated here.

I would like to nominate Amory Lovins please... Johnfos (talk) 21:13, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

 Done Suggestion taken. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:25, 20 December 2008 (UTC)