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.