Bill McKibben by Robert Shetterly. AWTT.org

"What sets wilderness apart in the modern day is not that it's dangerous (it's almost certainly safer than any town or road) or that it's solitary (you can, so they say, be alone in a crowded room) or full of exotic animals (there are more at the zoo). it's that five miles out in the woods you can't buy anything."

Scholar in residence at Middlebury College, Vermont, Bill McKibben has become a leading voice in the fight against climate change and the consumerist society that creates it. McKibben's book The End of Nature is widely considered the first broadly accessible alarm about impending global warming. As a co-founder of global, grassroots environmental movement, 350.org, McKibben is actively engaged in building public consensus to pressure world governments into agreeing to "a fair, ambitious and binding deal" that reduces global greenhouse gas emissions.