The Forgone Conclusion

So, it was announced earlier today that Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Is anyone surprised by this or all the punditry that will follow (myself included)? After all, Gore has won a Grammy, Emmy, and an Oscar all within the last year for his global warming schtick.

Consider that Gore gives the most dire warnings based on incomplete science and no one quite knows what will happen 50 or 100 years from now or what natural processes actually play a role in global climate change, and yet he himself jets around the world on a gas guzzling private jet.

The Nobel Prize for Peace is supposed to be about ending conflicts or solving difficult problems. He hasn't solved anything and raising awareness to a problem that might not even be a problem doesn't qualify in my book.

While the Myanmar junta brutally put down nonviolent demonstrations calling for democracy within the past month and led by Buddhist monks, the Prize Committee could have seen fit to issue the award to Aung San Suu Kyi for a second time. She won it in 1990 for her opposition to the junta and currently in prison for her efforts. The prize could have been used to highlight her efforts at bringing democracy to a totalitarian regime.

In 1997, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Jody Williams won, in large part because of the work of Princess Diana to raise awareness for the problems associated with unexploded munitions from conflicts around the world.

Al Gore gets to jet around the world to pontificiate about the consequences of global warming, and yet he has done little personally to change his behavior. Instead, his high profile jet-setting ways contribute far more to global warming than the average American.

Of course, the Nobel Prize isn't what it used to be. Not when other Laureates include Yasir Arafat (Palestinian terrorist), Kofi Annan (failed to act on Rwandan genocide), the IAEA (failed to stop nuclear proliferation to Pakistan, India, Libya, North Korea and the AQ Khan network) and Jimmy Carter (who certifies that totalitarian thugs won elections despite evidence of thuggery, intimidation and outright fraud in elections). So, I guess in that respect, it is totally befitting of Al Gore to receive this prize.

After all, it's a prize that makes the media elites and the Prize Committee feel at peace about themselves because they think that the sky is indeed falling but make no effort above and beyond talking about it to do something tangible to solve the problem.

UPDATE:
I'm not alone in wondering what campaigning about global warming has to do with peace. Vaclav Klaus, the Czech President, wonders as well. The Nobel Committee says that they issued the award because climate change may increase the danger of conflicts and wars.

Are you kidding me? Climate change will result in wars? How about man's intolerance of their fellow human being. We've already seen this climate change argument posited in relation to the Darfur genocide conflict, even though the Darfur genocide was due to genocidal intent of the janjaweed and an approving Sudanese government in Khartoum that had no problem eliminating animists and non-Muslims from the region.

The award could have gone to the African Union for their efforts at attempting to restore stability to Darfur, or Jammie and Radical Ron point out a few other more deserving candidates.