Al Gore deserves his Nobel Prize! No, really.
By Leverkuhn Posted in Archived — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
It seems like a lot of people, including scientists, politicians, and global warming skeptics are determined to rain on Al Gore’s parade. On Sunday Dr. William Gray, a world-renowned meteorologist, slammed Gore for popularizing a “ridiculous” fallacy about climate change. According to Dr. Gray, Al Gore’s chief contribution has been to aid in “brainwashing our children … They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous.”[1] Another global warming skeptic, French geochemist and former education minister Claude Allegre seethed about the “amount of nonsense in Al Gore's film! It's all politics, it's designed to intervene in American politics. It's scandalous. There's a presidential election upcoming in the United States, and it's well known that Gore wants to run.”[2] Many other people have questioned the wisdom of giving the Nobel Peace Prize to a man whose major achievement – raising concerns about possible man-made global warming – arguably has nothing to do with preserving world peace.
For my part, I tend to think the critics are missing something very important. Officially, the Nobel Institute is supposed to give this award to whoever has done the most to promote the cause of world peace. If you judge the Nobel Prize Committee’s decision based solely on the ostensible qualifications for the Nobel Prize, then the decision to give this year’s award to a crusader against global warming does indeed make very little sense. But if you look closely at the list of winners of the Nobel Peace Prize you will see that there are clearly other qualifications involved. [3]
Since the inception of this award the Nobel Prize Committee has made a habit of honoring some of the most disreputable and discredited characters in history with this award. That list includes at least one thief (Kofi Annan, 2001), several tyrants (Le Duc Tho, 1973; Frederick Willem de Klerk, 1993; Mikhail Gorbachev, 1990; Anwar al Sadat, 1978), a terrorist (Yasser Arafat, 1994), a certified warmonger (Gustav Stresemann, 1926), and a bomb maker (Andrei Sakharov, 1995). As if the villains weren’t enough, you also find several busybodies and organizations for busybodies (Jody Williams and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, 1997; the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, 2007), incompetents (Nelson Mandela, 1993, Mohamed El Baradei, 2005), and your run-of-the-mill prima donnas and useful fools (Woodrow Wilson, 1920: Jimmy Carter, 2006; Willy Brandt, 1971).
As a matter of fact, if you look at the list of names above there’s really only one thing that all of these people and groups have in common. They have not all contributed measurably to world peace, nor have they all benefited humanity in any meaningful way. What they have all done, however, is demonstrate a clear talent for self-promotion. In that respect, Al Gore definitely deserves his Nobel Prize, and he deserves the company he now keeps.
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/gore-gets-a-cold-shoulder/2007/10...
[2] http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22579885-663,00.html
[3] http://nobelpeaceprize.org/eng_lau_list.html
I agree that for the most part, Nobel Peace Price winners are scoundrels, incompetents or worse.
Once in a while, however, the Nobel Committee gets one right. Last year, the winner was Muhammad Yunus, a successful proponent of micro-lending. He teaches the poorest of the poor to raise themselves out of poverty using small-scale entrepreneurship. The micro-bank he started gives them very small loans for them to use to buy what they need to start a small business, and a support group to help them learn to run the business (as well as to hold them accountable).
See the following article in Business Week (sorry I don't know how to make the link prettier with html) http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_52/b3965024.htm
Too bad that even though liberals love this guy, they can't see that the best way to raise people out of poverty (both in the 3rd world and here in the US) is to help them learn how capitalism can work for them, instead of just pushing socialist solutions.
"I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into."
I don't know much about Yunus, but from the information you've provided it certainly seems that this man has been a positive force for good in the universe. On the other hand, it also seems that a man with such excellent credentials deserves a better award than one which has been sullied by so many killers, rascals, and failures.
The point of my diary was that the Nobel Committee has given this award to so many disreputable characters over the years (especially in the last few decades) that it is hardly worth awarding it to a decent person anymore. Of course, I suppose the cash prize that comes with it is worth having even if it means you have to get your name permanently etched on a list with the likes of Yasser Arafat. It all depends on how badly you need the money. Now, if it were me, at this point in my life, I'd take the money because it would solve a lot of my problems. But I'd probably feel the need to wash my hands afterwards.
A precedent embalms a principle.
- Disraeli
a piece of.... He has caused a similar word to be used more often.
“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men."
Calling an illegal alien an "undocumented immigrant" is like calling a drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist."