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On Friday Al Gore will find out if he can add “Nobel Peace Prize Winner” to his list of accolades for his work as an environmental campaigner. Many think the award would be well-deserved:
“A prerequisite for winning the Nobel peace prize is making a difference and Al Gore has made a difference,” said Boerge Brende, a former Norwegian environment minister who nominated Gore and [Sheila] Watt-Cloutier.
But such a choice would also be controversial as it would “place saving the planet above saving people from war and conflict.” Is such a contribution worthy of a Nobel peace prize?
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Um, no. Not when a large number of scientists don’t even support his ideas.
Whether or not one agrees with Gore’s assessment, he certainly has done a great deal to put environmental issues on the radar, and I think that’s a huge accomplishment worthy of celebrating.
Render unto the world the things that are the world’s.
And render unto God the things that are God’s.
I agree with what Stephen said, but a peace prize? I just read the first line of the thread and scratched my head. I think Gore is doing more for an issue he’s passionate about by campaigning about that issue than a distracting run for the presidency, but a peace prize?
I’m with adios. It isn’t that Gore has done nothing worthy of note, it just doesn’t quite come up to what we’ve seen with other Nobel Peace Prize winners.
Well let’s see Kofi Anon, Jimmy Carter, Yassar Arafat……..Al Gore, sure why not. They seem to be just giving them away anyway, and at least he’s not a terrorist.
Apparently an Oscar was not enough.
He might as well be up for the Nobel in Physics; it’s just as relevant to his “work.”
The Goracle will win because the Nobel committee will render a politically correct, anti-American decision. Of course, don’t you wonder who is purchasing the carbon offsets to counter the cost of the event?
What are his actual accomplishments? Has he stopped global warming? No, he made a movie. He flew in a jet to a few rallies and summits.
At least you can list the accomplishments of Jimmy Carter and Kofi Anan. (You can list the accomplishements of Yassir Arafat, too, but they don’t exactaly exemplify peace.)
Give him the award. I am fine with it. I don’t exactly hold the Nobel Peace Prize in the highest regard…based upon past winners.
Considering that “man-made” global warming is a hoax taking advantage of the sun’s natural cycle of heating and cooling, he should get the Nobel Prize for science-fiction and “snakeoil” salesman. How this merits a peace prize is beyond me. Perhaps it has to do with the carbon credit trading company he and some friends have started? If the right laws are passed, millions could be made by some at the expense of others. Most US citizens will have to turn back the clock to a lesser standard of living. Greater numbers living in third world countries will be starving. Sure, this is all worthy of a Nobel Prize for the man who invented the internet and according to the Nashville Electric Service burned through 22,619 kilowatt-hours of electricity at his house in one month last August, 2006 - a rate that is twice the level used by an average U.S. household in an entire year.
This just in…
http://tinyurl.com/3xqwv5
Setting aside debate of the validity of Gore’s POV, I gotta agree that environmental activism is outside the boundaries of the sort of work done by prior Peace Prize winners.
Carter, Anan, Arafat: even as I hold my nose, I can see that they were involved in peace stuff: treaties between nations not to drop bombs on each other, that kind of thing.
Yes, the Kyoto Protocol is a treaty of sorts, but it has nothing to do with the dropping or non-dropping of bombs, and I don’t think Gore played a major role in it anyway. (Did he?)
To follow up, one could argue that protecting the environment promotes peace between nations, in that it (arguably) makes life better for everybody. But the same could be said for advances in physics or any of the other sciences. Therefore, any achievement in any of these other areas should also be considered for a peace prize.
The Nobel Peace Prize no longer has any meaning. Haven’t they given it to people for planting trees or helping underprivileged people get a financial start? Both good things, but they have nothing to do with peace. Neither does Al Gore and his campaign to make money through “carbon credits.”
I would guess that the rationale (behind awarding the Peace Prize for reasons other than involvement in peace treaties) is based on the assumption that war is the result of the misallocation of scarce resources. I.e., if people weren’t poor, if they didn’t see wealthier nations squandering fossil fuels and messing up everyone’s planet, they wouldn’t be motivated to start/fight wars.
There may be some truth in that, but I have read that it is usually people who are relatively well off who have the “luxury” to spend their time planning/promoting acts of war, while the truly poor people would rather be doing their best to scratch out a living.
In any case, I’ve never paid much attention to who wins this prize. I appreciate the idea of trying to honor someone who works for peace rather than just honoring those who excel at war (which nations have always done), but I don’t imagine that the prospect of winning this prize has much to do with motivating people to work for peace. People who work for peace do so out of principle, not to win an international prize.
Peace Prize? No way.
Even if one were to accept that Gore’s assertions were correct, his work just isn’t peace related.
If you watch An Inconvenient Truth closely you will notice that it isn’t primarily about the environment. It is mainly about Al Gore talkin’ about Al, little Al, growing up Al, Al’s mommy, Al’s tobacco farmer daddy, Senator Al, the fighter Al, the traveler Al and now the scientific Al.
The scientific aspect of the film was a lesson in how to exaggerate with statistics. He can show a one degree temperature gradient on a graph so big that it takes a lift to raise him to the levels we’ll be at in just a few short years.
But the Nobel Peace prize often goes to the most radically left people on the planet. And if you hate Israel like Carter and Arafat, then you’re a shoe-in.