They are Bill and Melinda Gates and the singer Bono, for their charitable activities.
Last year the person of the year was George Bush, perhaps for his noncharitable activities? I really must stop being so nasty to poor George.
Many of us feel that the Force of the Year was Mother Nature, but she probably wouldn't turn up for a photograph or award ceremonies, and in any case we don't respect her enough to give her anything. Certainly not awards. Mostly we just try to rape her as much as we can get away with. And then we complain when she sends us various catastrophies. We have a totally human-centered view of them, never thinking that Mother Earth may just be applying some anti-flea shampoo on her surface vegetation, after having patiently suffered our attacks on her skin.
It is such an odd little quirk of the human mind: to ignore that everything we have is from her. Even our major religions carefully obliterate the mother-aspect of us all and imply that we don't need to worry about the health of this earth because we will soon go to a better place: the father's house.
Imagine what would change if we called earth Father Earth. Would we still feel so free to tinker with plants and animals? Would we still see earth as something that we must conquer? Perhaps, just perhaps, we might even respect our little planet if we called it a he?
This has veered quite far from the People Of The Year. But that was my intention: to point out how people-centered our understanding is and how that might be a the Biggest Mistake Of The Year both this year and in the near future.