Every now and again, one loses faith in humanity. THE single, hottest issue lately has been the battle against global warming, which even culminated in Al Gore getting the Nobel Peace Prize. Even overlooking how ridiculous it is that a former vice president of the single most polluting country in the world gets the peace prize for making a movie about how global warming sucks and might be connected to pollution, it sort of confirms the immediacy and importance of the subject. Of course, the fact that Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize on this basis further underscores how this prize is losing credibility. Not that long ago (1994), the peace prize was given to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, which can only be rationalized in the context that if you regularly kill thousands of people, you could be rewarded with the peace prize if you stop doing that and start preaching peace. Following the same logic, a couple of people from about sixty years ago would've been obvious candidates for the same prize. In the case of Al Gore, he was co-responsible for wreaking havoc on the environment for a number of years, and now he gets the peace prize for being an environmentalist. Fantastic reasoning.
One of the hottest issues in the local elections here in Trondheim was whether or not the city should institute a so-called rush hour fee, in which you'd have to pay through the nose if you drove your car to or from work during rush hour. Pay to teh tune of 80 NOK per day, no less. The reasoning was of course to reduce the number of cars commuting to and from the central areas of Trondheim. Never mind that it was massively flawed due to the politicians modelling this approach on the so-called Stockholm model and that they wanted to introduce this fee before they improved public transportation - it made sense from an environmental point of view. Fast forward to today, and the brilliant suggestion from Trondheim's biggest provider of public transportation - Team Trafikk - introduction of a rush hour fee on bus tickets. Exactly how moronic is it possible to be? Luckily, there's been a barrage of protests against what could possibly be the stupidest suggestion of the year.....
One of the hottest issues in the local elections here in Trondheim was whether or not the city should institute a so-called rush hour fee, in which you'd have to pay through the nose if you drove your car to or from work during rush hour. Pay to teh tune of 80 NOK per day, no less. The reasoning was of course to reduce the number of cars commuting to and from the central areas of Trondheim. Never mind that it was massively flawed due to the politicians modelling this approach on the so-called Stockholm model and that they wanted to introduce this fee before they improved public transportation - it made sense from an environmental point of view. Fast forward to today, and the brilliant suggestion from Trondheim's biggest provider of public transportation - Team Trafikk - introduction of a rush hour fee on bus tickets. Exactly how moronic is it possible to be? Luckily, there's been a barrage of protests against what could possibly be the stupidest suggestion of the year.....
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Rush hour fee on the bus? That's beyond stupid! However, I'm not very surprised. It's typical, first a fee is imposed/ removed to try to achive something (in this case, getting more people to take the bus), then suddenly somebody finds out "Hey, I can charge more for this since it's so popular now". Just like the sales tax (AVT) on food was cut in half. How many of the supermarked chains did actually cut 12% of the price? And for the few that did, how long did it take before the price was back up again?
Now, I'm going to post a bit lengthy comment on the nobel peace award prize later. I kind of disagree with you there, you plastic and paper-recycling, hotbedin', car-poolin' enviromentalist-bastard! ;-)
Can't believe they are serious about even proposing a rush-hour fee on public transportation, period. The correlation between cause and effect is completely lost on them.
Oh yeah? You think doling out the peace prize to Gore is a great idea? I'm looking forward to read the resoning behind that.....
Basically, I do agree that Al Gore may not be the best candidate for the prize this year. Even though I'm a fan of his work. But I have different reasons then you (mine are the intelligent ones... ;-D )
Write up something later. Have a lecture tomorrow and a sick kid here, so no time. now.
So, here are my lengthy thoughts about this years Nobel peace prize.
First, people seem to forget the prize this year was equally divided between Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Somehow people forget the IPCC, seeing that Mr Gore is "slightly" more famous of the two.
Secondly, some people say that this is a peace prize, but now it has gone to a person and an organisation that deals with climate changes and environmental issues. Granted, that is a valid argument, but only three years ago Wangari Maathai (yeah, I had to check the Nobel web site to get that name) won the prize for her tree planting project. So it's nothing new that the Nobel committee considers environmental issues to have an impact on peace.
So how about Al Gore? As Willy the Recycler writes in his post, he has been a part of a government in one of the world's most polluting nations. And just because he stops doing that, he should win prize? Well, again, the Nobel peace prize has made it a tradition to use the peace prize actively to promote peace causes, often giving it to persons whom directly or indirectly has been responsible for actions that are not in the spirit of the peace prize. Arafat, Peres and Rabin were mentioned, but you could also include Nelson Mandela/ Fredrik de Klerk and the Michael Gorbatsjov prizes. Now this is really a moral dilemma: Should people who have started out "on the wrong side" but have later made a large peace effort be excluded for the prize? Or can giving the prize to such people help promoting peace, and thus be worth it?
In Al Gores case, he has been interested in the environment in many years. And yes, he was vice president for 8 years, and still didn't do much for the environment. But look at Clinton who was president. He started actively involving himself with issues regarding third world countries by the end of his second term as president. And with the way the system works in the US, where one can only be elected for to terms, it's typical to start working on "unpopular" issues in the second term (late in the second term). If Al Gore had been elected president, I'm quite sure that he would have done similar with environmental issues. However, Al Gore manage to loose an election he almost had won before the campaign started...
But let's forget about Mr Gore as president. Even though he has a record with several years of working with environmental issues, it's quite obvious that it is his latest presentation (which turned into a movie and book) that has woken the interest, and is the main reason for him getting the Prize. Even though I'm a fan of his presentation (but still haven't seen the movie), I don't think he deserves the prize this year. Because it's only been a couple of years, and the movie came out last year. It's way to soon to say that this has a lasting impact or if this is just the big thing of the month. Compared to let's say Bob Geldof, which has been a key person in putting focus on Africa on several occasions, over a long period of time (Band Aid, Live Aid, Live 8), I think Al Gore needs to prove that he has made an impact that lasts longer then one year before he can receive the prize.
Other then that, I feel that it was a great prize this year, with focus on the environment and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a very worthy recipient.
You know.....if you could demonstrate that promoting environmental issues catalyzed peace, then BOTH Al Gore and the IPCC would be worthy recipients. IPCC is still exceptionally worthy of receiving some kind of official recognition for their work, but not the peace prize. Kind of like giving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to someone for his or her achievements in literature.
As to your comments on whether or not you should give the peace prize to someone who is responsible for actions very much in discord with the spirit of the prize, you kind of just throw the comment out there and leave it at that. Don't think I didn't notice, ya weasel ;-)
Even if we accept the "I used to to bad shit but now I've stopped" argument as being a valid reason for a reward, there are some key questions, like WHY did they change their behavior. Was it because of philosophical reasons, or due to the opportunity landscape changing? To extrapolate a little - Charles Manson stopped killing people because he got arrested and put in jail. He presumably didn't change because he suddenly felt that taking the life of other people was wrong. Same outcome, but I'm sure you'll agree that this is not a state funtion, i.e. the reason he stopped killing kind of matters for whether or not he should get rewarded.
Take the Al Gore example. Did he suddenly start caring about the environment because he had a change of heart, or because he failed spectacularly at becoming president and thus had to find another way of getting in the books?
Well, to summarize my lengthy comment:
Enviromentalists as peace prize winners: Yes (It's been done)
"Sinners go saints" peace prize winners: Dunno.
Peace Prize to Al Gore: No (Too soon).
One more thing: If you can get the peace prize for planting some trees in the dessert, I can't see why one shouldn't get the prize for taking global actions.
I see your point regarding the "planting trees" and various laureates who've gotten the award for stuff that's great and all, but which is very difficult to demonstrate that promotes peace.
They should call it something else, then. Nobel Environmental Prize or something.
There are some nobel prizes that are missing (e.g. maths), but I think you would dimish the value of the prizes if you started to add more. But for enviromental stuff vs peace: I did remember a certain inter-department course about water that from the University that said enviroment had in impact on peace... ;-)
Oh yeah - THAT course. That was useful....
I'm not saying that peace and environment are inversely correlated, but rather that the relationship is murky and hard to define
I agree. But unless you actually physically stop an ongoing war, there are so many facets of peace that it's hard to make a strict definition.
Yes, that course was useful. Now I've used what I've learn there on a multi-national blog...
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