Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about some of the people who are changing the World and most importantly Saving it
Terry Tamminen
Born in Australia, Terry Tamminen, 57, has been a sheep farmer, a sea captain, a property dealer and, until last year, environmental adviser to California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Largely because of Tamminen's influence, Arnie greened up, passed a raft of groundbreaking environmental laws, put pressure on polluting industries and is now politically popular. The world's seventh largest economy now has targets and timetables to shame nearly every country in the world - a 25% cut in emissions by 2020 - and is hailed as a beacon of eco responsibility.
Tamminen has moved on to run the state's climate plan and is working with other US states and cities to create a de facto national climate change policy, and in so doing forcing President Bush's hand. Tamminen argues that the 5% of the world population who live in the US are responsible not for 25% of the world's climate emissions, as the textbooks say, but for at least 50% of them if you include the energy needed to power the Chinese factories that are churning out plastic toys and other mass consumer goods for the voracious US market.
Elon Musk
Entrepreneur
Elon Musk, 36, struck gold with PayPal (a system for paying bills online) during the 90s dot com boom and the South African wunderkind is now the major investor and chair of the board at Tesla Motors, a Silicon Valley electric car startup. The company plans to shake up the moribund US auto industry and dramatically curb CO2 emissions, ripping out the internal combustion engine and the petrol tank, and replacing both with a motor that boasts few moving parts and the sort of lithium batteries found in laptops. A limited-edition Tesla Roadster, a sports car that reaches 60 mph in less than four seconds, and can do 245 miles per charge, is due this year. Hollywood eco-stars such as George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio have bagged the first of a 600-car production run being built by Lotus in the UK. Next up, says Tesla, is a mass-market family sedan that could be fuelled by solar panels on the garage roof.
Vicki Buck
Entrepreneur
As the world scrambles to find a fuel supply that doesn't exacerbate global warming, New Zealander Vicki Buck, 51, has emerged as the acceptable face of biofuels. She's one-third of Aquaflow, a small company that was one of the first to crack the technology needed to harvest wild algae from sewage ponds, then extract fuel from it suitable for cars and aircraft. Companies from Boeing to Virgin are now beating a path to her Christchurch door.
They're excited by the fact that it's theoretically possible to produce 10,000 gallons of algae oil per acre, compared with 680 gallons per acre for palm oil. Moreover, Buck has form: she was mayor of Christchurch, set up top eco-website celsias.com, is a director of NZ Windfarms, and is now working on a start-up to reduce one major cause of climate change: the methane gas emitted from billions of animals which make up 49% of NZ's greenhouse gases - chiefly by changing their diet.
And as always have a chilled day from the Viking
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