The staffers over at the preeminent paper for Atlanta, Creative Loafing, has compiled a list of people and organizations that are actively trying to save our natural resources and improve quality of life for not just Atlanta, but the rest of the unfree world. RummagePad will do a small part and highlight some of the people spotlighted within CL's article.

In the Georgia General Assembly, a good piece of environmental legislation can quickly turn bad if enough lawmakers get their hands on it.

Jill Johnson knows this all too well. On the final night of the recently concluded legislative session, the program director and lobbyist for Georgia Conservation Voters watched a bill go from simple — allowing tax assessors to alert property owners if their land is in a floodplain — to cumbersome, having been all but destroyed by unfriendly amendments pushing unrelated pet projects.

“It became loaded up like a Christmas tree and ended up dying,” Johnson says.

Such is the unfortunate reality at the Capitol, where Johnson works with a handful of environmental activists who fight for clean water, healthy air, and renewable energy against more than 1,600 registered lobbyists who wine and dine lawmakers on behalf of environmentally hurtful big-business interests.

“She’s earned the nickname ‘Iron Jill’ for her tireless work as an advocate," says longtime Gold Dome lobbyist Neill Herring of the Sierra Club, who often collaborates with Johnson.

Thanks to Johnson’s past lobbying, legislators agreed to offer tax credits to property owners who conserve their land for future generations. This year, she convinced on-the-fence lawmakers to oppose a perennial piece of legislation pushed by the billboard industry that threatened trees on public land. With the help of the Garden Club of Georgia, Johnson blocked the bill.

“I’m a pretty competitive person," Johnson says. "Part of it is, I just want to win. But I [also] want to figure out how we can start playing offense, and have incremental change in terms of moving us forward with environmental protection."