It is sometimes said that people don’t become radicalised by reading books or listening to speeches, but by their own direct experience. If so, then the increasingly tangible evidence of the way climate change is threatening the very way of life of so much of humanity has convinced more and more people that the need to act is both real and urgent.
Tackling the climate crisis is critical to the future of humanity, and freakish weather from pole to pole, and from oceans to deserts and disappearing islands, is as powerful an argument for action as any.
Nonetheless, the existential struggle for the future of life on Earth needs its scientists, its advocates, its activists, influencers, businesspeople, politicians and artists to plot the evidence, make plans of action, raise awareness, win arguments and make the laws, and sign the international conventions that are the only hope of mankind’s survival.
These are the outstanding personalities from across the globe being celebrated in the third of The Independent’s Climate 100 lists.
It would be invidious to attempt to rank achievers from so many different fields, and hardly in the spirit of what is a collective endeavour. So the Climate 1...