Meet the new eco-warriors: Slick, professional and media-savvy

SIAN BERRY

Co-founder: Alliance Against Urban 4x4s

Against: 4x4 cars in urban areas

For: raised congestion charge, raised vehicle excise duty for highest polluting cars, restrictions on 4x4 advertising in cities

"It started off with a parking ticket," says Sian Berry, co-founder of the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s, who was working as a copywriter in 2004 when she decided to campaign against the 4x4 cars in the London borough of Camden.

"I was living within an enclave of 4x4 owners and found no one was doing anything to address the emissions problem," she says. "In America, campaign protesters were putting stickers and even spray paint on cars. I came up with the idea to spoof local authority parking tickets to make people think without making them angry." Berry designed a spoof parking ticket replacing the words "Penalty Charge Notice" with "Poor Vehicle Choice" and an explanation.

Then she teamed up with Blake Ludwig, Greenpeace co-ordinator for Camden, to launch Alliance Against Urban 4x4s with financial backing from the Rainforest Action Network, Rising Tide UK, and private donations.

Meanwhile, supporters set up a number of Alliance groups in other parts of the country. In January 2005, the group became a minor media sensation thanks to its first school run protest.

"A number of us dressed up as teachers and lolly ladies to demonstrate outside schools in Hampstead where a procession of 4x4s line up the hill on the school run each day," Berry says. Similar protests have since been staged in other parts of the UK and even abroad.

To date, the Alliance has distributed 140,000 parking tickets and successfully campaigned for higher congestion charges. It has also distributed Valentine cards to drivers of environmentally-friendly cars.

PETER MYERS

Co-founder: enoughsenough

Against: aviation industry carbon emissions, unnecessary street lighting, political corruption, deforestation driven by growing demand for palm oil-based biofuel

"More lunging at throats than snapping at heels" is how former corporate financier Peter Myers describes the work of enoughsenough, the campaign group he co-founded two years ago to communicate a range of complex environmental issues in a simple, high impact and often satirical way.

Unlike more established organisations such as Greenpeace ­ where Myers worked for five and a half years after quitting the City, enoughsenough is a loose affiliation of supporters, many of whom come from a financial or advertising background, funded through personal donations.

The group develops high profile media campaigns to raise awareness of key concerns, which include aviation industry carbon emissions. It is behind an on-going series of national newspaper ads by a fictional organisation called Spurt urging people to fly more because it's their patriotic duty.

Another enoughsenough ad features a petrol pump nozzle held to the head of an orangutan beside the words: "Tell the government to choose the right biofuel ... or the orangutan gets it".

Myers set up the group with people he met through Greenpeace and The Climate Group, where he has also worked.

"We felt a need to be a bit more radical to get the climate change message across." he explains. "We set out to say the things a lot of people seem afraid to say. Because we're not a membership organisation we don't care about making friends. It's all about creating debate, and lighting fires with a new audience ­ people who read Heat magazine and Zoo."

True to this pledge, enoughsenough's next campaign features glamour model Jodie Marsh. She stars in an online game created for enoughsenough called Punch Their Lights Out. Players use an image of Jodie to box an opponent resembling their local councillor ­ a way of encouraging voters to lobby their councils to follow the lead of Essex, which recently decided to turn off street lighting when it is not needed.

"There is a huge movement of people doing great things at a grassroots level," he adds. "Space exists for ordinary people to do something positive right now. The key is to empower them with knowledge of the size of the climate change problem we all face and the significance of the choices every one of us can make."

JANE FINNERTY

Founder: Walton Manor, Oxford branch of the Women's Institute

Campaigns for: recycling, reduced packaging, imaginative local responses to climate change

"It's about making people part of a group and convincing them they can do something to make a difference," says the management consultant Jane Finnerty, founder of the Walton Manor WI branch in Oxford, about the local environmental awareness initiatives she co-ordinates.

When Finnerty, who lives in central Oxford, set up the branch in 2004 she signed up 50 members, with ages ranging from 32 to 93, who quickly agreed to make environmental action a central focus.

"There are loads of environmental groups in Oxfordshire, but what we wanted to do was to work at a grassroots level to spread the message that every one of us can make a difference," she explains.

"So different branch members take the lead on issues from recycling to packaging and climate change. We support a range of centrally co-ordinated WI activities as well as developing other local events and activities of our own."

This month, for example, the Oxfordshire WI staged a Packaging Action Day, with members lobbying outside supermarkets to urge shoppers to remove unwanted packaging and buy unwrapped food, wherever possible.

Finnerty is involved in running WI workshops on car-sharing and co-ordinates a touring light bulb library to explain the advantages of energy efficient bulbs. And as a "climate explorer" for the Oxfordshire ClimateXChange, set up by Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute, she encourages the public to come up with ideas to combat climate change.

"Most WI members, because many are not so young, tend to think campaigning is a bit scary. We try to encourage everyone to get involved and have found our older members thoroughly enjoy engaging with local residents in the high street on climate change," she says.

"The WI has 211,000 members which means it touches 211,000 households throughout the country, many of whom own their own home. That's a lot of influence in terms of awareness and buying power."

JOSS GARMAN

Co-founder: Plane Stupid

Against: aviation carbon emissions, airport expansion, short-haul flights

For: a tax on aviation fuel

Plane Stupid supporters came up with a novel way to celebrate Tony Blair's tenth anniversary as prime minister in May. First they blocked the entrance to BAA's Heathrow headquarters, then they threatened to prevent staff members from leaving until they had read a pile of the latest climate change reports.

"Plane Stupid is a response to the lack of positive action on climate change being taken by the aviation industry and the mixed messages on climate change coming from Government," says the student Joss Garman, who co-founded the group with his ex-flatmate, Richard George, two years ago.

"When we heard 300 airline executives were coming to London for a conference but that airline emissions weren't on the agenda, we galvanised a group of local residents threatened by airport expansion and set out to disrupt the meeting," Garman says.

The demonstrators tied rape alarms to helium balloons then floated them outside the windows of the conference venue before attempting to storm the delegates' dinner at Tower Bridge.

The protest attracted so much interest that Plane Stupid was set up soon after. "Many of our supporters are young people who used conventional forms of protest about the war in Iraq, with no effect, who now want to make sure they make a difference on climate change."

Last November the group occupied the London headquarters of Easyjet. In September another group of supporters staged a sit in on the taxiway at Nottingham East Midlands Airport.

Garman, who is sitting his finals at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, has been involved in campaigning since he set up a local branch of Greenpeace near his home in mid-Wales, when just 14. " We've achieved a lot in a little time," he says. "Climate change is now high up the agenda... But our job won't be anything like done until airport expansion is halted and aviation emissions are in decline."