Photo: Xeros

The humble washing machine. This essential domestic appliance keeps our clothes clean, saving us untold time and trouble. Yet it guzzles precious drinking water, which is becoming increasingly scarce. In the U.K. alone, some 455 billion liters (12 million gallons) of water go down the drain each day thanks to washing machines. Not for much longer, if Stephen Burkinshaw and his team at Leeds University in England have anything to do with it. They’ve developed a washing machine that only needs 23 milliliters (a cup) of water per load—about 2 percent of the usual dose.

The technology relies on tiny pellets made from recycled plastic. The half-centimeter-wide beads, stored in a cartridge at the back of the machine and released once the wash cycle begins, absorb dirt and stains removed from textiles by laundry soap. At the end of the cycle, a grill opens at the bottom of the drum, from which the chips can be removed for reuse. A 20-kilogram (44-pound) batch will do a year’s laundry. Since the process also leaves clothes practically dry at the end, electricity and water consumption go down and a dryer becomes redundant.

According to Bill Westwater, CEO of Xeros, a firm spun off from the university to develop the product, it has yet another advantage. “You can wash garments that would usually need to be dry cleaned as well as clothes designed for wet washing,” he says. The machines will be launched in the U.K. this year at prices comparable to those of traditional models. It’s the “ideal green proposition, a process that delivers an unequivocal benefit with no trade-off on cleaning performance,” says Burkinshaw. “And it saves on the costs of electricity and water, so there’s less damage to your wallet as well as your planet.”

Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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Why the name Ode? I’m asked that question fairly often. Before launching our magazine in the Netherlands in 1995, we spent months looking for a name. It had to have a positive and international meaning to reflect our mission.

Finally, one morning, “Ode” came to me while I was taking a shower. It’s a bit of an old-fashioned word, but positive, no doubt: the tribute, the ode to joy. “Ode” is also surprisingly international. It’s a Greek word that’s written the same way and has the same meaning in many languages: English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, German and many more, I’m sure. (Let me know!)

The name also supports our broader mission: Ode isn’t just a magazine. We stand for the celebration of life. We cherish beauty, joy, friendship and love. We look for possibilities and opportunities. We want to make things cleaner, greener, healthier, more just and sustainable—and more fun. A magazine is only part of the way we hope to achieve that; our website is another part. Odemagazine.com enables us to reach you and connect you with your fellow Odeans around the world. In the past six months, traffic at odemagazine.com has doubled as more and more of you have posted your stories and blogs. At the same time, our editorial team is adding new online exclusives. As we enhance content and interactivity, the site continues to reward frequent visits.

Logging onto the Exchange section, for example, provides the recommended daily dose of hope and inspiration amid the daily challenges of work and life. If that’s not enough, sign up for our new daily newsletter, which brings you the most inspiring story our editorial team can find in the international press. This is all part of what we’re about: a passionate ode to the possible. After all, what we share is not just a magazine; it’s an outlook on life.

Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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Photo: Erik Hersman

What if you live in a slum in one of Africa’s big cities and you can’t afford to buy a soccer ball? You make one yourself, of course, tying plastic bags together with a piece of rope. This invention symbolizes the ethos of AfriGadget, a group blog devoted to using African ingenuity to solve everyday problems. This photograph was taken in Kibera, one of the continent’s largest slums, located in Nairobi, Kenya. It appears on the site with the words: “When you have nothing, anything is possible.”

Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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Photo: Sandy Huffaker Jr.

In 1995, Tariq Khamisa was delivering pizzas to help pay his expenses at the University of San Diego in California when he was shot and killed by Tony Hicks, a 14-year-old gang member. Hicks was sentenced to 25 years to life. But to Azim Khamisa, imprisonment of the boy who murdered his 20-year-old son didn’t feel like justice. “Almost as soon as it happened, I realized there were two victims on each side of that gun,” says Khamisa. “The real culprit was not this young boy, but society. When you look at Tony’s life, you can see the downward spiral happen from the beginning.” So Khamisa forgave Hicks and teamed up with the boy’s grandfather, ples felix (right) to start the Tariq Khamisa Foundation (TKF), which teaches young people about the pain that comes with gang violence.

So far, TKF has reached millions of students in thousands of schools across the U.S., spreading a message of hope, forgiveness and personal responsibility. Hicks, now 26, has been working with TKF from his prison cell by appearing in videos to warn high school kids about the dangers of gang violence. “In San Diego, there’s been a substantial decrease in gang violence where we’re active,” says Khamisa, adding that they’ve received more than 100,000 letters from students touched by their work. Khamisa is now fighting for Hicks’ early release: “Tony would be a lot more useful to society working for the foundation than rotting in a prison cell. This foundation is a result of forgiveness. It’s better than revenge.”

Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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These kids in Shola, one of Addis Ababa's poorest neighborhoods, celebrate the opening of the Shola's Children's Library with 50,000 books, in English as well as local Ethiopian languages.

Foto: Ethiopia Reads

In the rural town of Awassa, Ethiopia, donkey carts hauling vegetables or farming equipment over the dusty, dirt roads are a common sight. Less common are books. Many children have never seen one; few have read a book outside a classroom. Even in schools, textbooks are rare. So when Yohannes Gebregeorgis wanted to bring the joy of reading to the outskirts of Addis Ababa, he hit on an idea uniquely suited to the area. Gebregeorgis created the Donkey Mobile Library, a brightly colored cart filled with books and drawn by donkeys.

Gebregeorgis, who returned to his homeland after spending eight years as a librarian in the U.S., leads the Donkey Mobile Library twice a month to the shade of a tree in the town square, where children—and some parents—gather to hear him read. They sit in a circle on small, painted seats he’s brought. “It’s very difficult for kids to get reading material,” says Gebregeorgis, “Most schools don’t have libraries.” Moreover, most Ethiopian children—an estimated 72 percent—have families who can’t afford to send them to school. Gebregeorgis believes ancillary reading is an essential key to education. “Education without reading outside the classroom is like eating food without salt and spice,” he says. “It’s bland.” When his donkey cart arrives, it delivers not only excitement and wonder but tools as fundamental to self-sustainability as those used for harvest.

Gebregeorgis established a publishing arm of his non-profit organization, Ethiopia Reads, and produced Ethiopian folktales in the country’s official language, Amharic. Ethiopia Reads now has eight titles. These books sit on the donkey cart beside familiar English-language classics like Winnie the Pooh and The Wizard of Oz. Book donations from schoolchildren and librarians in the West keep the cart stocked. Other global book-donating organizations such as Biblionef, a Netherlands-based non-profit, contribute to the donkey cart, adding to the “micro-reading” movement in support of small children’s libraries around the world.

The movement often travels on the backs of beasts of burden. In Kenya, camels bring boxes of books to the remote, semi-nomadic people. To villagers in Awassa, the delivery of books has come to resemble a festival, sometimes led by Nigist Helina, “Queen of All Donkeys in Ethiopia.” Gebregeorgis dresses her regally and when she arrives, children come running, cheering, “Long live the queen!”

Gebregeorgis has had such an impact that he’s hitching up more carts. But he wants literacy to become part of daily life in Ethiopia, and that means more permanent solutions are needed. He’s developing as many as 16 school libraries. When Gebregeorgis found that some rural schools were far too small for a library, he engineered the Portable Library Project, a box designed to hold up to 200 books for kids in the first and second grades. “At first. most kids would hold a book upside down,” says Gebregeorgis. “But later they learn how to use it, how to flip the pages and then gradually to read the stories. They are now star readers.”

Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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I make it a habit to find inspiring, promising stories about new solutions and possibilities when I read the newspapers on Sunday morning. I usually succeed, although the optimistic news I’m looking for is generally hidden in the back pages. The front pages mostly report on whatever goes wrong.

The Sunday papers should make my job easier since they’re the thickest of the week. But today, it seems there’s really no good news. I read about failing banks, still more home foreclosures, the threat of deflation and looming bankruptcies in Detroit. Even the news about Barack Obama, only weeks ago elected on a surge of hope, is dominated by the seriousness of the economic situation. No story about him lacks a reference to the doom and gloom of the Great Depression.

I turn another page to learn that cafés in France are closing. More and more French people are deciding to buy a bottle of wine at the supermarket and drink it at home instead of going for a glass au zinc at their local café. Empty French cafés—that’s a really bad sign.

Pessimism and despair have taken hold of the globe. It’s the perfect time, I think, to enthusiastically announce Ode’s first annual list of 25 Intelligent Optimists.* It’s at times like these that optimism is more essential than ever. It’s easy to be an optimist when things are going fine. But optimism is a quality anyone can practice in every circumstance, especially during difficult times. Optimism isn’t about denying reality; it’s about creating a better reality than you’re facing. That’s why we dedicate Ode to “Intelligent Optimists.”

The Intelligent Optimist knows a half-empty glass is also half full. And she knows more can be gained by focusing on what she has than by focusing on what she’s missing. You learn to become optimistic by ­concentrating on things that give you a sense of satisfaction, and you remain an optimist by feeding those things to make them grow. Intelligent Optimists know that for every problem there is (at least the beginning of) a solution, and that the search for that solution can be inspirational in itself. At the same time, they’re not afraid of negative thoughts, which they realize help them stay realistic.

In the following pages, we present people who demonstrate, through their lives and through their work, what it means to be an Intelligent Optimist. To put together this special issue, we asked celebrated activists, artists, business people, politicians and thought leaders to pick their favorite Intelligent Optimists, individuals who aren’t famous yet but should be because of the work they’re doing to bring positive change to their communities, their countries and the world. These are women and men who show that anyone anywhere can make an important contribution. They’re dedicating their lives to issues beyond their immediate self-interest. The roads they travel are never easy, because they’re new roads they mostly have to build themselves. But their optimism helps them overcome the challenges they face.

One Intelligent Optimist was selected by our editorial staff from the many nominees presented by our Web readers. (Please see odemagazine.com/io for a list of all readers’ nominees.) All these Intelligent Optimists, as well as those who nominated them, serve as inspirational examples of people who’ve made many positive contributions to our common good.

May their inspiration spark some optimism in your life in these darker days. It’s a good time to enjoy a half-full glass in an imperfect world and know that optimism is a choice.

* We have 27 individuals on our list, since two couples are among our Intelligent Optimists, but we're counting each couple as one.

Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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James Kass, Founder and executive director, Youth Speaks. Oakland, California

Photo: Fred Hayes

James Kass is a force of nature. The hip, bold visionary has created a powerful space within our democracy from which young people can fly bravely out into the world with new found voices, “bringing noise from the margins to the core,” as James would tell you. While I’ve always believed art will find a way to break out in beautiful ways, no matter how much it’s pushed aside, when a determined energy like James’ acts as the wind at the back of art for social change, it explodes in a way that doesn’t allow those in its presence to turn away. In the James Kass equation, art and change are inseparable. New, bold poetic expression is the heart of Youth Speaks, the marvelous organization he created. Youth Speaks challenges young citizens of the world to find, develop, publicly present and apply their voices as creators of social change. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it. I’m inspired by it. Youth Speaks is the beat of a generation, empowering young leaders who’ll take us through the years ahead in ways we can’t yet imagine. It’s an almost ironic yet completely perfect complement that all of this came to James as a way of combating illiteracy, alienation and silence, while simultaneously creating a global movement of brave new voices speaking truth to power. What could be more intelligently optimistic?

Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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Michelle Chan, Campaigner for Friends of the Earth in San Francisco, California.

Photo: Pak Fung Wong (Domini)

There’s a framed photo hanging in Michelle Chan’s living room that makes her feel uneasy when she stops to look at it. It shows an old Chinese couple standing in an alley. The man’s eyes are downcast. The woman looks up, into the distance, soft light illuminating her face. Behind them are round, woven baskets leaning against a wall. From the moment Chan bought the picture, she says, it got to her: “I knew the picture was of a scene in a place that doesn’t exist anymore.”

Chan fought for nine years to save that place, but her efforts ultimately failed. Despite the vehement objections of environmental and human-rights organizations, the Chinese government built the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, completing it in 2008 after more than a decade of construction. The dam displaced an estimated 1.4 million people, flooded 370 miles of farmland, destroyed towns, villages and countless archaeological sites and threatened the river’s fish stock and endangered dolphin species. And of course, it displaced the old man and woman in the picture, whose home and ancestors’ graves are now under 500 feet of water.

Though Chan couldn’t stop the dam, the struggle gave her motivation and direction in her career. In 1995, Chan, just 23 at the time, took on the Three Gorges battle as a campaigner with the environmental organization Friends of the Earth. Instead of protesting against the Chinese government directly, she and fellow campaigners took a new approach: They exposed the Wall Street banks involved in funding the project, a tactic that gradually reshaped public expectations of banking.

It was the first major project in which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had gone to private-sector banks and asked them to take responsibility for the ethical and environmental impact of the projects they funded. And it was the first time that some commercial banks acknowledged that certain projects were too harmful to merit their involvement.

The term “sustainable” has become commonplace, but it usually refers to consumer products, agricultural practices or energy. Chan’s work has done much to create and push forward the concept of sustainable finance: the idea that banks should evaluate investments based on social, ethical and ecological as well as financial criteria. Organizations such as Friends of the Earth see banks as key to getting corporations to practice corporate responsibility. Thanks in part to pressure from NGOs, more than 60 commercial banks have voluntarily adopted a set of ethical principles for assessing the environmental and social impact of investments in the developing world. Many banks have also begun to implement environmental and social responsibility policies affecting their operations.

With worries over climate change intensifying and a financial system in crisis because of widespread use of risky investing practices, many environmental organizations think the time is right for sustainable finance to become even more far-reaching. “The public—especially the American public, because we’ve paid a lot for the bailout—is ready to see a return to soundness, sustainability and decency in our financial system,” Chan says. “People are hungry to participate in a way that allows their savings and investments to create positive change.”

One afternoon in her office in San Francisco’s financial district, Chan is laughing hard, catching her breath to talk, then losing it again. She has a bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon in her hand and is about to toast her office mate Adina Matisoff. But the success she’s celebrating is a quiet one. She and Matisoff have just completed a paper analyzing China’s new financial regulations; surprisingly, they include environmental laws, which Chan suggests provide an example to the U.S.

It’s hardly a high-profile stunt, but pushing forward new ideas is Chan’s particular brand of activism. “A lot of what advocacy groups struggle with are power issues,” Chan says. “Part of the job is to shape the debate, to get your ideas out there.”

And Chan is quite skilled at it. “She’s an incredible pioneer,” says Matt Arnold, director of Sustainable Finance Limited, a consulting firm that works with banks on their environmental practices. “She’s been doing this for longer than most people knew it was a ‘thing.’ She’s provided a huge amount of intellectual content for developing these policies at banks.”

Chan knew sustainable finance was the next frontier in the mid-1990s, when she got her start. Back then, the idea of asking Wall Street banks to broaden their definition of corporate responsibility was new. “At the time, big companies thought being environmentally sensitive meant recycling their office paper,” Chan says. “We had to push to redefine what social responsibility meant for these big companies. The way we did it was by talking to them about the environmental impacts of their portfolios.”

One part of banks’ portfolios was particularly vulnerable in discussions of ethical behavior. It was a narrow but important segment of banks’ global business called project finance, the most common lending practice for funding infrastructure and resource extraction in the developing world. It quickly became the lever NGOs used to raise consciousness within the banking sphere. In the early 1990s, the World Bank had changed its policies to encourage more of these investments by commercial banks. NGOs already knew how to lobby the World Bank, which has a mandate to work for the public good; the challenge Chan took on was to develop techniques that would work with private sector banks that think in terms of profit.

The way to do that, she discovered, was to frame ethical conversations in terms of financial risk. Project finance provided the perfect entry point. These loans are typically guaranteed on the basis of the revenues of the project, which leaves the bank no claim to a client’s other assets should the project fail. This means the bank’s bottom line is much more vulnerable to the risks of the project; it’s therefore in the bankers’ interest to assess the negative environmental and human impact that might cost money to fix. “These issues at the project level are very visible, real and occasionally quite tragic, so they scream out for a robust risk-management framework,” says Sustainable Finance Limited’s Arnold.

The work on project finance paid off in 2003 when a group of major U.S. and European banks voluntarily adopted the Equator Principles, a set of ethical standards and operating procedures for managing these kinds of investments. Participating banks agree not to lend money to borrowers who don’t comply with standards of environmental and social responsibility, as defined by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, including concern for pollution, biodiversity, fair working conditions, involuntary resettlement and the rights of indigenous peoples.

Chan often uses the phrase “necessary but not sufficient” to talk about her work. “Are things different today than they were yesterday because this bank or group of banks has decided to follow environmental standards?” she wonders. “It’s something I ask myself all the time.” If the roster of financial conglomerates at which Chan has helped shape environmental policies is any guide—Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others—it does make a difference.

Shawn Miller, director of environmental and social risk management at Citigroup, says Citi has changed the way it operates as a result of adopting the Equator Principles. For example, a company wanted to borrow money for an oil and gas development in the Middle East that posed harm to a coral reef. Citi hired outside experts to assess the situation and finally required the project developer to alter the plan and protect the reef. Citi now invests more heavily in alternative energy, and recently committed to uphold a set of standards for coal power investments. Called the Carbon Principles, these commit the company to working with coal-fired power clients to encourage lower CO2 emissions and investment in alternative energy options.

“It’s opened up the company’s thinking on broader opportunities, not just from a risk-management perspective,” Miller says. “It helped us start thinking, ‘Okay, we manage our risk appropriately, but we can also make money out of doing good.’”

The crucial question for Chan is: Will banks stick by the principles they espouse, especially during a dire economic downturn when profits may take precedence over principles? In 2004, Chan founded BankTrack to support organizations that were keeping watch on banks both in the U.S. and abroad. BankTrack is a confederation of international environmental and human-rights groups that monitor and lobby the global financial sector. In part, they work to fill in what Chan sees as the biggest missing piece of the Equator Principles: accountability. They track information about “dodgy deals” and make sure the public is aware of banks’ activities.

A few years ago, Chan started paying attention to the influence of another major power player in development: banks of emerging economies. In particular, she looked at China, which was expanding its investments in other countries to feed its growing economy. “What we’ve found is the most lucrative and easy natural-resource extractions have already been taken by Western nations, but you now have emerging market economies competing with us for the same kind of concessions,” Chan says. “Since the world is reaching its ecological limits, the struggle to get the last resources out is going to be pretty nasty.”

For example, China is involved in Indonesia, where forests are being cut down at a rate of almost 5 million acres (2 million hectares) annually, mainly from illegal cutting, according to the World Bank. Chinese banks fund several logging operations there, and environmental groups allege that some companies engage in illegal forestry practices, including logging in endangered tiger and elephant territory. Chan has been to China several times, teaching environmental groups to use some of the same advocacy techniques she put into practice with Wall Street banks. Groups there are protesting a range of companies they say pollute or disregard human rights in China. She’s impressed on them the direct connection between polluting companies and the financial institutions that underwrite them. “If you can follow the money and get conditions put on the money, you can potentially improve the actions of corporations,” she says.

It turns out that environmental organizations have a surprising ally: the Chinese government. Starting in 2007, Beijing has passed a series of laws to restrict major banks from lending to and investing in companies with poor environmental records in their operations within China. For instance, China created a “green credit policy” that blacklists companies with negative environmental records. Another law requires companies seeking initial public offerings to get approval from the Chinese Environmental Ministry. “It’s funny and heretical to rip a page from China’s quasi-socialist playbook,” Chan says. But she adds that China—which recently bailed out its financial sector as well—is in a situation similar to that in the West, and the U.S. could learn from its model. “It’s something that we should consider as we rewrite our financial regulations or consider our economic stimulus package,” she says. “We should consider how this moment can be shaped to create a more sustainable future.”

Chan’s office is decorated with mementos of her travels: strings of glimmering purple fish scales from an indigenous group in the Amazon; a miniature barrel of sweet, light crude oil from the Urucu-Porto Velho pipeline in Brazil; a bright set of trading cards made for the annual Socially Responsible Investing Awards, which include one made in her honor—a young superhero in red tights brandishing a sword, captioned “Michelle Chan: Global Avenger.”

But Chan is hardly the typical fire-breathing radical. She labors quietly and courteously in boardrooms and at conferences, and sees change come in the smallest of increments, as shifts in the definition of corporate responsibility. She fervently hopes this is affecting practice. But measuring success on the ground is still hard. Even after 13 years, she doesn’t know for sure how much improvement has come from her work. Until banks provide greater accountability and transparency, she can’t tell whether their directors are following through on their good intentions. Unless the markets are regulated with the environment in mind, the money trail too often leads to more pollution, more population displacement and more species under threat.

“We do live in an instant gratification world,” says Chan. “But anyone involved in social change realizes these things don’t happen overnight. When you take the longer view, whatever you can achieve in your time on Earth is a contribution. It’s a job to be shared with others, as well as others that come after you.”

“Michelle Chan is an extremely strategic thinker, a hard worker, and a dedicated freedom fighter. When I think about what socially responsible investing can do to make the world a better place, she is one of the first people I think of.”

— Amy Domini, founder and CEO of Domini Social Investments, and author of several books on ethical investing

Carmel Wroth is Ode’s editorial intern.

Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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The physiologically-designed, Birkenstockish rubber sandals and home-knit-looking socks on Martin Vosseler's feet have obviously seen a fair amount of travel. As has the red out-door jacket and the bulging backpack slung over his shoulder when meet up at Dusseldorf (uuu-umlaut) railway station. Together they make for an incongruous look: greenie garb combined with high-tech apparel.

Incongruity, however, is the hallmark of the 59-year-old's life: he is army captain turned pacifist, physician and Greek and Latin scholar turned eco-campaigner, slowpoke kid turned marathon hiker. As co-founder of environmental protection organizations such as the International Energy Forum sun21, the soft-spoken Swiss joins forces with other, like-minded people. But he is equally prepared to set out on solo missions like the 2003 pilgrimage with the motto “There is enough Sun for All of Us” from his hometown of Basel to Jerusalem. Yet there is one thing that has remained the same throughout Martin Vosseler's existence: his “love for the marvellous world we are allowed to live in” and the “belief that the it needs to be protected”.

To promote his favorite cause—the 100 pct use of renewable energy--Vosseler spent most of last year on a 3,600-mile, 8-months coast-to-coast hike across the US—all the way from Los Angeles to Boston. In blistering heat and biting cold, on lonely roads and crowded thoroughfares, his slight, almost thin figure could be seen trekking along patiently, pulling his 45-pound duffel bag and tent behind him on a travois constructed of two wheel-equipped sticks. For anyone who asked—be they passers-by or journalists--Vosseler had this message: “This walk is to be a prayer with body and soul—a prayer for awareness, ideas, courage, imagination and actions which can make the energy change happen in time.”

Vosseler is quite used to singular journeys. In 2007, he and four other solar power advocates, intent on proving that this energy source is not only useful on terra firma but on the high seas as well, crossed the Atlantic in a catamaran driven solely via photovoltaic modules. Weathering storms and mighty waves, the 14-meter boat, “sun21”, and its crew managed to reach its destination, the port of Le Marin on Martinique in the Caribbean, only 29 days after leaving Las Palmas on Gran Canaria—a new record gaining the project entry into the Guinness Book of Records. To the gentle Swiss doctor, the trip on the “ingenuously outfitted vessel”—with a staggering efficiency of 80 pct to 90 pct, its twin engines far outstrip traditional, gasoline-fuelled motors that barely reach the 20 pct mark--“symbolized aspects of today's energy change. It was about departure, about leaving everything [old] behind”.

From early youth, Vosseler, the son of a geographer and nurse, has “had that great love of nature—the woods, the mountains, the streams. A shy and timid child, it was where I felt most at ease.” Appalled by the destruction of the countryside near his hometown, he became active as an environmentalist in 1975. A few years later, while working as a doctor in Boston, he also joined the “International Physicians against Nuclear War” and, once back in Basel, founded a Swiss chapter. This, he reminiscences, later lead to his involvement with energy change, the move away from fossile fuels and nuclear energy” and his commitment to NGOs like sun21.

It's his unfailing optimism, his love of people, and his faith in the “divine power that has created this planet” which have given the gentle, bespectacled Vosseler, who likes to write children's books and play the violin in his spare time, the seemingly boundless energy for all these and other activities. A great deal of personal courage, too, have assisted the calm, grey-haired man with the impish smile. Convinced that he had to quit his service as an officer in the military, for instance, he decided on conscientious objection in 1990, even though that step was punished by 30 days of detention.

Neither does Vosseler mind the inconvenience arising from his conviction that unnecessary air and car travel is harmful to the earth's fragile eco-system and should therefore be avoided when possible. Instead of taking the plane to go to the US last year, he thus boarded a US-bound freighter from Europe. And not surprisingly, he is also a vegetarian. “The actions of one single person may have such great effects”, he argues. “If more people realized this, we could get closer to the miracles which are possible.”

Although he really hasn't had much time to settle back in again after the return from the “sunwalk”, Vosseler is already planning his next quest—setting up solar and wind energy facilities on Dominica in the Caribbean. Together with Swiss and EU authorities, he says, sun21 and other NGOs “want to make the local Callinago tribe independent of fossile fuels. Hopefully, that will be achieved in between two to three years.” The remaining 3,000 members of that ancient Amerindian people, which survived the ravages of Colonialism by withdrawing to a remote, mountainous area in the east of the island, are the only native Caribs left. At present, the Callinago have to procure the electricity for their 3,700-acre reserve from Dominica's only power plant. That's not only expensive, but also environmentally critical since the plant runs on oil, Vosseler, who had encountered the community during the Solar Boat journey, argues.

And something equally ambitious and unusual is sure to follow this project. “We have heated up the atmosphere,” warns Vosseler on his website. “We have poisoned the biosphere with dangerous chemicals and radioactivity. We have polluted the rivers, the lakes and the sea. We have exploited the soil and made it infertile.” Yet, an eternal optimist, he believes, too, that “we are also able to return to the natural life cycles, we can also create life conditions that enable the planet to be healed. All solutions are ready. We just have to implement them: Together, Together with the sun. Now.”

Websites:

• www.martinvosseler.ch
• www.sunwalk2008.com
• www.transatlantic21.org
• www.sun21.ch
• www.mbt-shop-basel.ch

Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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Susan Davis, president of Capital Missions Company in East Troy, Wisconsin.

Photo: Sandy Huffaker Jr.

Susan Davis, president of Capital Missions, has been working in the trenches of our dysfunctional capital markets for decades. She helped found the community bank ShoreBank; the Committee of 200, a group of top women business owners she empowered to take charge of their money; and Investors’ Circle, a national network of social venture capital investors. Susan founded most of the effective networks of investors funding solar energy and shifting our global economy toward sustainability. Susan is working closely with me to ­accelerate the growth of the green economy. We’ve given up on Wall Street, so we’re helping launch a new electronic stock exchange exclusively devoted to socially responsible investors and enterprises, Mission Markets. Like most female leaders, Susan isn’t ego-driven, nor does she seek publicity or power. Only since the current financial crises are women being called on for advice; Wall Street has always been a male bastion and still deeply resists women. Susan has long believed the most effective approach to deep social change is to fly under the radar. So it gives me great pleasure to nominate her in the hope that she gets some richly deserved credit at last.

Sunsan Davis was nominated as one of
Ode's top 25 Intelligent Optimists by Hazel Henderson.

Hazel Henderson, president and founder, Ethical Markets Media, and author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy

Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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Click here to watch the video.

Issue: Jan/Feb 2009

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