From the CEO of the only channel to run Obama's climate speech in full to the editor who refused to print climate skeptics' letters - Anne Kelly picks out climate change champions

The eight champions of climate change in the US in 2013

What will future generations will say about 2013, about the year climate change action made a significant mark on college campuses globally, was re-committed to by the president and even prompted a Philippines leader to go without food in order to spur stalled climate negotiations in Warsaw?

To paraphrase the philosopher Edmund Burke, bad things happen only when not enough of the good people stand up. And this year, some good people really did stand up.

Here are some of the individuals who stand out for standing up on climate change:

• Mike Robinson and his colleagues at General Motors, which joined 700 other companies and 3,000 individuals in signing Ceres' Climate Declaration, which calls tackling climate change "one of America's greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century."

• David Kenny, Weather Channel CEO, whose TV network covered President Obama's important 49-minute climate speech last June in its entirety (the only major media outlet to do so.)

• Letitia Webster, director of global corporate sustainability at apparel giant VF Corp, who affirmed the IPCC's latest climate study and its implications for global cotton suppliers who are already seeing "raw material disruptions caused by prolonged droughts in the western U.S. and more recent flooding in Asia."

• Geraldine Link, public policy director at the National Ski Areas Association, who helped organise 100-plus ski areas to speak out on climate change and the threat it poses to winter skiing and the rest of the $12bn winter outdoor industry.

• Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democrat, for being the climate champion of the US Senate, delivering more than 50 climate speeches on the floor of the Senate this year.

• Paul Thornton, the Los Angeles Times editor who refused to run letters in the newspaper from climate "skeptics". "I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page," Thornton wrote to his readers. "When one does run, a correction is published. Saying, 'there's no sign humans have caused climate change" is not stating an opinion, it's asserting a factual inaccuracy."

• TJ DeCaprio, senior director environmental sustainability at Microsoft, who championed an internal carbon fee at the software giant and recently published a "how to" guide that others can replicate.

• Sam Brownback, Republican Kansas Governor, and lawmakers in a dozen other US states who fought off cynical attacks to repeal state Renewable Portfolio Standards, which have catalysed thousands of wind and solar projects across the country and generated hundreds of thousands of jobs.

All of these individuals collectively are bringing us closer to a sustainable, low-carbon world. Let's hope many more good people stand up in 2014 – and that those already standing will stay standing.

"You can describe the predicament that we're in as an emergency," activist Wendell Berry often reminded us. "Your trial is to learn to be patient in an emergency."

Anne Kelly is policy director at Ceres, a US-based nonprofit organisation mobilising business leadership on climate change. Follow on Twitter @CeresNews.

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