Al Gore Winning the Nobel Peace Prize
.I’m not particularly impressed by this award. While I think that global warming is a hugely important issue, and can see why they want to call it out with a prize, I don’t think it’s really related to “peace” as such. Furthermore, I’m not convinced Al Gore has done all that much.
I haven’t seen An Inconvenient Truth, but my impression is not that Gore has come out and said that we have to radically change our growth-based, corporate-based, unsustainable (without some miraculous new technology) economy and society.
I don’t think much of his career as an environmentalist, either. Al Gore: passionately dedicated to the environment both before and after he was Vice President of the United States.
I think he would have been a far, far better President than Bush—that should be obvious. That wouldn’t necessarily have made him a good President, but still would have made a big difference. Then again, despite their other differences, Gore is still very much a creature of the Establishment, and I don’t think he has or would have strayed too far from representing their interests. I still think he should have fought tooth and nail for the 2000 election, and that he should have protested the betrayals of democracy that occurred during it, and so hold that against him somewhat.
It also seems odd to me to focus on global warming rather than efforts to prevent war and violence in the Middle East, but I’m not sure how they set their criteria. That the prize is supposed to go to committed peace-makers is clearly open to question—after all, they did honor Henry Kissinger with a prize (!) in 1972, which is completely mind-boggling. I find it hard to take them too seriously given that year’s award.