Boris Palmer is a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 politician and member of the Green Party

Alliance '90/The Greens

Alliance '90/The Greens is a green political party in Germany, formed from the merger of the German Green Party and Alliance 90 in 1993. Its leaders are Claudia Roth and Cem Özdemir...

. He has been mayor of Tübingen

Tübingen

Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...

 since January 2007. From March 2001 to May 2007 he was a member of the Baden-Württemberg Landtag

Landtag

A Landtag is a representative assembly or parliament in German-speaking countries with some legislative authority.- Name :...

, the State parliament in Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

.

Palmer's father, Helmut, dubbed Remstalrebell (Rems

Rems

The Rems is a right tributary of the Neckar in eastern Baden-Württemberg. It is 78 km long. Its source is in Essingen, near Aalen. It flows generally west through the towns Böbingen an der Rems, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Plüderhausen, Schorndorf, Remshalden and Waiblingen. At Remseck the Rems flows...

-valley-rebel) was a very well known and controversial figure. The son of a Christian mother and a Jewish father and born out of wedlock, he became a stubborn outsider, a dedicated expert on apple trees and dabbled with politics. Helmut Palmer stood without any success for about 250 elections as mayor in villages and cities in southwestern Germany and fought what he considered bureaucracy, power abuse and antisemitism. Helmut refused to pay several fines, e.g. in libel cases, and was briefly imprisoned a number of times. The former state minister and CDU member Christoph Palmer is a grand nephew of Helmut and a grand cousin of Boris Palmer.

Palmer graduated from high school (Abitur

Abitur

Abitur is a designation used in Germany, Finland and Estonia for final exams that pupils take at the end of their secondary education, usually after 12 or 13 years of schooling, see also for Germany Abitur after twelve years.The Zeugnis der Allgemeinen Hochschulreife, often referred to as...

) at the Steiner School in Winterbach-Engelberg

Winterbach, Baden-Württemberg

Winterbach is a town in the district of Rems-Murr in Baden-Württemberg in Germany....

 in 1992. From 1993, Palmer studied history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 and mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen

Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen

Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen is a public university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of Germany's oldest universities, internationally noted in medicine, natural sciences and the humanities. In the area of German Studies it has been ranked first among...

 and in Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

. In 1996 he joined the Green Party.

After graduating from Tübingen in 1999 he worked as a scientific assistant for the fraction of the Green Party in the Bundestag

Bundestag

The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...

, the German Federal parliament, in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

.

In 2001 he won a seat in the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg

Landtag of Baden-Württemberg

The Landtag of Baden-Württemberg is the state diet of the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg. It convenes in Stuttgart and currently consists of 139 members of four Parties...

 and was appointed party spokesman for environmental and transportation issues.

In 2004 he ran for the office of mayor of Stuttgart, finishing in third place in the first round ballot at 21.5 % of votes, a better result than all previous Green candidates for mayor of Stuttgart. He withdrew his candidacy before the second round ballot with an indirect recommendation that his followers should vote for the incumbent mayor Wolfgang Schuster

Wolfgang Schuster

Wolfgang Schuster has been the Lord Mayor of Stuttgart, Germany, since January 1997. He is the successor to Manfred Rommel and a member of the CDU.-Studies and early positions:...

 on condition that Schuster would hold a referendum on the controversial project Stuttgart 21

Stuttgart 21

Stuttgart 21 is an urban development and under construction transport project in Stuttgart as part of the Stuttgart–Augsburg new and upgraded railway project in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria in Germany. It consists of the replacement of the tracks and platforms of Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof, the city's...

, which Palmer is opposed to, if costs would increase significantly. Even though that has been the case, Schuster hasn't kept that promise.

After being re-elected to the Landtag in early 2006, in July Palmer decided to run as mayor of Tübingen and won the election on 22 October with 50.4% of the vote. He subsequently resigned from his Landtag mandate after taking office in January 2007.

His eight-year term as mayor ends in 2014.

Climate protection initiative

To help fight climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

, he has introduced a local campaign with the goal of reducing CO2 emissions in Tübingen by 70% until 2020 (Tübingen macht blau, literally meaning Tübingen goes blue, and figuratively Tübingen skips work). He encourages saving energy, switching from traditional to alternative sources of energy

Alternative energy

Alternative energy is an umbrella term that refers to any source of usable energy intended to replace fuel sources without the undesired consequences of the replaced fuels....

 and lessening pollution, e.g. by introducing solar panels to the roofs of the town's schools, by subsidizing people who exchange their old heating systems with modern, more efficient ones, by subsidizing public transport and introducing more frequent public transport connections and by free transportation on public buses on Saturdays. In the longer term, he wants to create more space for bicycles and pedestrians in relation to cars. He also doesn't have an official car, instead he travels everywhere within the city by bicycle or by public transport.On this first as a Mayor of Tübingen he met the group of 22 South African students.

Felicia Langer controversy

In July 2009, Palmer was criticised
for recommending Tübingen resident Felicia Langer

Felicia Langer

Felicia Langer is an Israeli human rights attorney known for her defense of Palestinians charged with political violations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She has also authored several books alleging human rights violations on the part of Israeli authorities. In July 2009, German President...

 for the Federal Cross of Merit.