The other choices are all strong picks (and I have both love and respect for my brothers-in-arms) but Barack Obama is obviously the most important figure this year:

Obama to double renewable energy

Perhaps many too many leaders of the family of humanity today live arrogantly and greedily in our planetary home. They appear to take pride in their unsustainable behavior. Certainly, we will "have our cake and eat it too," they say. They own fleets of cars, fly around in thousands of private jets, live in McMansions, exchange secret handshakes, frequent exclusive clubs and distant hideouts, and risk nothing of value. They will live long, large and free, so they say. Please do not bother them with the problems of the world. They choose not to hear, see or speak of them. They hold much of the world's wealth as well as the extraordinary political/military power great wealth purchases. If left to their own devices, they will continue to self-righteously exercise their 'inalienable rights' to conspicuously consume whatever they desire; to recklessly dissipate Earth's resources and expand economic globalization unto every corner of our natural world and, guess what, beyond; to carelessly consent to the unbridled global growth of human numbers so that where there are now 6.7 billion people, by 2050 we will have 9+ billion members of the human family and, guess what, even more people, perhaps billions more beyond 2050, if that is what they wish. They are the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe. They enjoy freedom and living without regard to human limits and Earth's limitations. They adamantly eschew any talk of the personal responsibilities that come with the exercise of personal freedoms or any discussion of the existence of biophysical boundaries. They deny good science or consider it junk. Climate change is a hoax to them.

Many too many of our leaders and all of the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us choose to deny the existence of "limits to growth", even though abundant scientific evidence of the existence of such boundaries is available. Please understand that these 'Masters' do not want anyone presenting them with scientific evidence that they could be living unsustainably in an artificially designed, temporary world....a manmade world filling up with gigantic enterprises, virtual mountains of material possessions, ill-gotten gains, phony profits and filthy lucre.

Scientists appear not to have found adequate ways of communicating to the family of humanity what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the rapacious dissipation of Earth's limited resources, the relentless degradation of the planet's frangible environment, and the increasing risk of destroying Earth as a fit place for human habitation in our time, when taken together, appear to be proceeding at breakneck speed now, moving toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort.... unless, as a matter of course, the world's colossal, artificially designed, soon to become patently unsustainable global economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic 'wall' called "unsustainability" at which point the unbridled expansion of the runaway global economy crashes before Earth's ecology is collapsed.

Who knows, perhaps we can still realistically and hopefully hold onto the expectation that behavioral changes by many members of the human community will encourage others, even the Masters of the Universe, to go forward from this time and place toward the achievement of new goals: restricted and "right-sized" rather than unbridled and ever larger-scale production, restrained rather than outrageous per human over-consumption and the regulation of human population growth..... changes that save both the human economy and God's Creation for our children and coming generations.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php

..........Perhaps you would agree that there are leaders in the world today with too much power for one man. If one person can have too much power, then I am inclined to vote for leaders like Albert Einstein to have it. He possessed clear vision, a coherent, truthful mind, intellectual honesty, a dedication to science and moral courage, among other splendid attributes other people saw in this great and good man.

On the other hand, it appears that we do have leaders today who evidently have too much power and can be easily identified for having demonstrated their woeful inadequacies when it comes deploying that power for what is great and good. To the contrary, current leadership is striking for its absence of a vision of our children's future; for its intellectual dishonesty and infidelity to science; for waging an unnecessary war and vanquishing nothing more than moral authority in the process; for extolling the virtues of its own unbridled greed.

Perhaps new leadership will bring change, the kinds of benevolent change Einstein would have loudly, clearly and regularly promoted.  

Sincerely,

Steve

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php