SAVERS OF THE WORLD

 Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about 

Ken Livingstone

 

London Mayor

Ken Livingstone, 62, has dragged the capital to the top of the major world cities' environment league. He shocked the more timid Tony Blair and Gordon Brown when he set an ambitious 60% CO2 reduction target by 2025 - and now he is championing renewables, energy from waste, heat and power systems, and ways Londoners can adapt their homes. 

The capital has seen a huge increase in cycling, and from this month most of the city's public buildings will be "retrofitted" to save energy. It's beginning to work, he says: four years ago, more than one in three Londoners used their cars every day; now few er than one in five do. But he can do little about airports. Almost one-third of London emissions come from City airport and Heathrow, and there are plans for both to nearly double in size. He was nominated by Jonathan Porritt.

Ken Yeang

Architect

Ken Yeang, 59, is the world's leading green skyscraper architect. In the tropics especially, high-rises are traditionally the most unecological of all buildings, often wasting up to 30% more energy than lower structures built with the same materials. Yeang uses walls of plants, photo voltaics, scallop-shaped sunshades, advanced ventilation and whatever he can to collect water and breezes. 

The idea is to make buildings run as complete ecosystems with little external energy supply. He's not there yet, but the possibility of the green skyscraper is developing fast as ecological imperatives filter into the consciousness of the startlingly backward world of international architecture.

Masoumeh Ebtekar

Politician

Appointed Iran's first woman vice-president by President Khatami in 1997, Massoumeh Ebtekar, 47, later became an inspired environment minister. She made a name for herself in 1979 as the 19-year-old revolutionary student who became chief interpreter in the 444-day US embassy siege in Tehran. She left government office in 2005, is now a Tehran city councillor and heads the Centre for Peace and the Environment. 

Anything green has taken a back seat since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took power, and Iran's cities are choked with incredible pollution - but because of Ebtekar there are now thousands of environment groups led by women seeking change. 'We need to put spiritual and ethical values into the political arena... You don't see the power of love, you don't see the power of the spirit, and as long as that goes on, the environment is going to be degraded and women are going to be in very difficult circumstances," she says.

And as always have a chilled day from the Vikng