Was haben Dieter Salomon und Leonardo DiCaprio gemeinsam? (Update)

Die Fra­ge könn­te auch lau­ten: was ver­bin­det Ange­la Mer­kel und den ehe­ma­li­gen Sän­ger von Mid­night Oil, Peter Garrett? 

Alle fin­den sich auf der Lis­te „50 peo­p­le who could save the world“, die der Guar­di­an auf­ge­stellt hat (gefun­den bei SEED). Über Salo­mon (oder eigent­lich über Frei­burg, ganz pas­send zum neu­en Image als „green city“) lesen wir da:

Frei­burg in sou­thern Ger­ma­ny is the most eco­lo­gi­cal­ly-awa­re town in Euro­pe and pos­si­bly the rich world. The city of 250,000 peo­p­le dubs its­elf a „solar regi­on“ and gathers near­ly as much power from the sun as is coll­ec­ted in all of Bri­tain. It’s sta­cked with rese­arch estab­lish­ments and its solar firms employ thou­sands of peo­p­le. It is also the play­ground of archi­tect Rolf Disch, who builds hou­ses that need to be hea­ted for only a week each year and who­se cost is paid for by the elec­tri­ci­ty gene­ra­ted by the panels on their roofs. Salo­mon, 47, says that by 2010, at least 10% of all the ener­gy con­su­med in Frei­burg will come from rene­wa­bles. To attain this, a huge area of the city cent­re has been tur­ned into a pede­stri­an zone and the­re are 500km of bike paths. More than a third of all jour­neys are made by bike, and the­re are fewer than 200 par­king places for cars in the cent­re com­par ed with 5,000 for bikes. The snag? The qua­li­ty of life is so good in Frei­burg that too many peo­p­le want to live the­re and it’s hard for anyo­ne to buy a house.

Und zu Mer­kel heißt es u.a.:

Ange­la Mer­kel, 53, has inhe­ri­ted Tony Blair’s man­t­le as the poli­ti­ci­an for­cing cli­ma­te chan­ge the har­dest on to the world stage, and she is a for­mi­da­ble advo­ca­te. The only major play­er left who hel­ped ham­mer out the ori­gi­nal glo­bal warm­ing agree­ment at Kyo­to in 1997, she is one of the very few with a grasp of what it means if huma­ni­ty fails.

War­um blog­ge ich das? Mal unab­hän­gig davon, ob die­se Lis­te so Sinn ergibt (auch Björn Lom­borg steht mit dabei …) – es ist auf jeden Fall ganz inter­es­sant, zu lesen, wie die Fremd­wahr­neh­mung über Mer­kel, Salo­mon und Scheer in einer eher kri­ti­schen bri­ti­schen Zei­tung aus­sieht. Und wer dem­nach die wich­tigs­ten „play­er“ im Spiel um die Zukunft sind.

Update: (15.01.2008) Inzwi­schen haben auch taz und Badi­sche Zei­tung (nur Abo) die Guar­di­an-Lis­te aufgegriffen.