Petteri Taalas named European of the Year by Reader’s Digest

Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the WMO, holding the Reader's Digest European of the Year award for 2021. (Picture: By courtesy of WMO)

 

Each year Reader's Digest editors in Europe nominate a shortlist of Europeans who have had a major influence on a pressing contemporary issue and are helping to make the world a better place. First launched in 1996, the European of the Year for 2021 is 59-year-old Finnish meteorologist Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). He has been presented with the award trophy at WMO headquarters in Geneva.

 

The award recognizes Petteri Taalas's achievement in prompting action by European and world leaders, as well as by the European Union, the United Nations and big corporations such as IBM and Google, to play a role in the prevention of climate change and to mitigate its impacts. Taalas explains, "Growing numbers of states and individuals are aware of the facts and motivated. Now the leaders of China and Russia are talking about climate change too....You have to have international consensus and the science has to be solid enough to convince the decision makers to act."

 

Taalas has experienced at first hand one consequence of global warming: the record-breaking heatwave in Northeastern Europe in July 2010. That summer he was staying at his summerhouse in Finland as wildfires were raging across the border in Russia. The fires were close enough to set off his smoke alarms.

 

Born in Helsinki in 1961, he studied physics and then meteorology at the university and started dating his future wife Anni with whom he has five grown-up children. He served as Director General of the Finnish Meteorological Institute, before becoming Secretary-General of the WMO in 2016. And he practises the message that he preaches—cycling to work most days, driving an electric car, and following a mainly pescatarian diet. His homes use energy-efficient heat pump technology for heating and cooling, which he says has paid for itself in four years.

 

Taalas admires young idealists such as Greta Thunberg and, while not agreeing with all she has said, believes "the overall result has been positive." He disapproves, however, of the methods of extreme groups and does not support fear-driven campaigning. "I think it's not helpful. If the public image of climate mitigation is alarmism, that may even be counterproductive."

 

According to the British science journalist Graham Lawton, Taalas has delivered his message to leaders such as Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson and UN Secretary-General António Guterres with considerable dexterity. "He is a really good scientist, but he also gets the politics and the diplomacy. He has the ear of politicians and they pay attention to him because he knows how to play the game." Taalas smiles at that assessment remaining convinced that the increase in global warming can be kept to two or three degrees above pre-industrial levels. "It's doable," he says.

 

Note on Reader's Digest European of the Year Award

Since this unique award was launched 26 years ago, the magazine has honored people, without a celebrity profile, who have dedicated themselves to campaigning on issues such as corruption, rape, torture, human trafficking, HIV/AIDs and women's rights.

 

2020 Selina Juul, who founded Denmark’s Stop Wasting Food movement

2019 Óscar Camps, the Spanish life-saver for rescuing hundreds of migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean

2018 Edit Schlaffer, Austrian creator of MotherSchools equipping mothers to identify and tackle extremism

2017 Boyan Slat, a young Dutch inventor for efforts to remove plastic waste in the world’s rivers and oceans

2016 Laura Kövesi, anti-corruption czar in Romania (appointed the first public prosecutor of EU fraud in 2019)

2015 Felix Finkbeiner, German teenager encouraging people to plant millions of trees across the planet

2014 Thomas Minder, who promoted ground-breaking controls to curb Swiss corporate excess

2013 Agnieszka Romanzewska-Guzy, founder of Belsat TV in Poland promoting press freedom in Belarus

2012 Isabel Jonet, food bank campaigner whose work helps 400,000 Portuguese from going hungry

2011 Monika Hauser, the activist Italian physician supporting victims of sexual violence in war zones

2010 Iana Matei, who founded Reaching out Romania for victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation

2009 Joachim Franz, the German cyclist for leading a crusade against HIV/AIDS

2008 Maria Nowak, a Polish economist supporting the poor via microcredit aid

2007 Dr Ruedi Lüthy, the Swiss AIDS specialist who set up  clinics in Zimbabwe

2006 Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch-American for protecting Muslim women’s rights from militant Islam

2005 Leonid Roshal, a Russian doctor at the scene of the Beslan massacre (later a Nobel Peace Prize contender)

2004 Peter Eigen, the German founder of NGO Transparency International

2003 Simon Pánek, who co-founded the Czech People in Need organisation

2002: Eva Joly, the judge who investigated fraud in the Elf-Aquitaine case (and later became a French MEP)

2001 Linus Benedict Torvalds, a Finnish-American software engineer who invented the Linux operating system

2000 Paul van Buitenen, the Dutch whistleblower on EC fraud and inefficiency (and later MEP)

1999 Dr Inge Genefke, Danish physician who founded rehab centres for torture victims

1998 Pete Goss, the British solo sailor who rescued a competitor from drowning

1997 Frederic Hauge, who as a Norwegian activist tackled nuclear waste storage

1996 Father Imre Kozma, a Hungarian priest helping refugees and the homeless

 

Reader’s Digest February editions carry a major feature on Petteri Taalas.