The Nobel committee takes on climate change

Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are certainly worthy of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Coming from different directions, they have done a remarkable job of calling the world's attention to what Gore rightly calls "a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity." A lot of people will also see this as a serious slap to the Bush administration. They'll be right. The Nobel committee has, unsurprisingly, tried to minimize the political aspects of the Peace Prize. But this prize is in fact political, and there's no reason it should not be so. Alone among the Nobel prizes, the Peace Prize is meant to make a statement about the world.

The Bush administration should read a clear message in some of the committee's recent choices - the UN Secretariat; Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the UN nuclear monitoring agency, former President Jimmy Carter. This year's signal is even clearer, celebrating, as it does, the sort of global panel the administration abhors, and calling attention to an issue that Bush has essentially ignored, and even disparaged.

While every responsible institution and government has begun to take seriously the fateful ramifications of global warming, the Bush administration has adamantly dragged behind, conceding the obvious only when there is no remaining choice, boycotting any initiative that is not its own, avoiding any action that might reduce the profits of big business. Bush's people are bound to grumble that they are victims of an ideological smear, and there's little chance that the prize will convert them on climate change. But everything that contributes to building a coalition for action is good, and every alarm bell helps.

Looking back over recent years, it is clear that the former vice president has done very well with his time after losing the 2000 presidential contest to George W. Bush - far better than any other failed presidential contender that comes to our minds. It reminds us of what another Peace Prize winner once said. In the words of Theodore Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood." A firefighter extinguishes a bushfire on Sydney's northern suburbs Wednesday.

To be continue in other article...

(Jakarta, Jumat 22 February 2008)

Re-publish by Jacob Paradox from link (www.routers.com),(www.iht.com), (www.routers.com), (www.nytimes.com)

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