Items20The creator’s order
  1. 1Gaylord NelsonGaylord NelsonBorn 4 Jun 1916Before there were Green parties, the Wisconsin Democrat showed how environmental ideas could work inside an existing one. As governor he funded land purchases for parks with a one-cent tax on cigarettes; as a US senator he proposed the first Earth Day in 1970, whose 20 million participants helped…0i
  2. 2Petra KellyPetra KellyBorn 29 Nov 1947Kelly co-founded Die Grünen in 1980 and led them into the Bundestag in 1983, the first Green breakthrough in a major national parliament. She called it an "anti-party party": ecology, non-violence, grassroots democracy and social justice, with MPs rotating out mid-term to avoid careerism. She…0i
  3. 3Bob BrownBob BrownBorn 27 Dec 1944Brown led the blockade of the Franklin River dam in Tasmania, entered the state parliament the day after his release from prison in 1983, and saw the dam stopped when the new Hawke government used federal powers, upheld by the High Court. He went on to found the Australian Greens in 1992 and lead…0i
  4. 4Joschka FischerJoschka FischerBorn 12 Apr 1948Fischer was sworn in as Hesse's environment minister in 1985 wearing trainers, the first Green to hold ministerial office in Germany, and he became the leading "realo" arguing that Greens should govern. As federal foreign minister from 1998 he backed NATO's 1999 Kosovo intervention, and was hit by…0i
  5. 5Pekka HaavistoPekka HaavistoBorn 23 Mar 1958When Haavisto became Finland's environment minister in 1995, he was the first Green to sit in a European national cabinet. He later ran the UN Environment Programme's post-conflict assessments, which measured environmental damage from wars in the Balkans and Afghanistan, and as foreign minister…0i
  6. 6Dominique VoynetDominique VoynetBorn 4 Nov 1958Voynet negotiated the Greens' place in Lionel Jospin's "plural left" coalition and served as environment and regional planning minister from 1997 to 2001. She secured the decision to close the Superphénix fast-breeder reactor and wrote a planning law requiring regions to plan for sustainable…0i
  7. 7Jürgen TrittinJürgen TrittinBorn 25 Jul 1954As Germany's federal environment minister from 1998 to 2005, Trittin negotiated the 2000 agreement with the power companies to phase out nuclear power, introduced a deposit on drinks cans that business fought for years, and steered the eco-tax on energy. The nuclear deal was attacked from both…0i
  8. 8Hermann ScheerHermann ScheerBorn 29 Apr 1944A Social Democrat rather than a Green, Scheer earns his place because he wrote one of the most copied green laws anywhere. With Green MPs he drafted Germany's Renewable Energy Sources Act of 2000, which guaranteed fixed prices for solar and wind power fed into the grid; feed-in tariffs spread to…0i
  9. 9Jeanette FitzsimonsJeanette FitzsimonsBorn 17 Jan 1945Fitzsimons co-led New Zealand's Greens from 1995 to 2009 and showed how a small party can legislate from outside government. Her member's bill became the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act 2000, creating a national efficiency agency, and in 2009 the Greens signed a deal with John Key's National…0i
  10. 10Wangarĩ MaathaiWangarĩ MaathaiBorn 1 Apr 1940Maathai's Green Belt Movement paid rural Kenyan women to plant trees, tens of millions of them, linking soil, firewood and water to women's livelihoods and, eventually, to democracy, since protecting forests meant confronting the Moi government over land grabs. After years of arrests she won a…0i