Eruantale

Oct12 How does this contribute to peace?

The Nobel Foundation announced today that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007:

…is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.

This comes as no surprise to me, but I am still a bit… confused. Alfred Nobel, the man whom the award is named after, said that the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded, “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.

Putting aside my doubts on the subject of global warming, I do not see how Al Gore and the IPCC’s efforts to raise public awareness on this subject contribute to “peace” in any way. Shouting to the world, “Global Warming is coming!” doesn’t really count as promoting fraternity between nations. It doesn’t discourage fraternity, either. The two things are entirely unrelated. Likewise, neither Gore nor IPCC have done anything in particular for the abolition or reduction of standing armies. As for the holding and promotion of peace congresses, as far as I’m aware, that has not been their concern.

It is interesting to note that this comes shortly after a British court found nine inaccuracies or “untruths” in An Inconvenient Truth, and ruled that Mr. Gore’s documentary could only be shown in schools if the teacher pointed out these inaccuracies and made clear that the film is a political work. Here are a few of the inaccuracies listed:

• Mr. Gore claims that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”. The judge said: “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s “wake-up call”. He agreed that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water - “but only after, and over, millennia”.” The Armageddon scenario he predicts, insofar as it suggests that sea level rises of seven metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus.”
• The documentary speaks of global warming “shutting down the Ocean Conveyor”—the process by which the Gulf Stream is carried over the North Atlantic to western Europe. Citing the IPCC, the judge said that it was “very unlikely” that the Ocean Conveyor, also known as the Meridional Overturning Circulation, would shut down in the future, though it might slow down.

As a result of this ruling, Dr. Muriel Newman, Director of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, has written to the President of the Academy Awards, asking that An Inconvenient Truth’s Oscar be revoked. She is quoted in a press release as saying in her letter:

Given that the Oscar Award was presented in the documentary category and not the drama category, the only appropriate action now is for the Academy to rescind the Award as it was clearly inappropriately classed as a documentary.

The truth, as inconvenient as it is to Al Gore, is that his so-called documentary contained critical distortions that are quite contrary to the principles of good documentary journalism. Good documentaries should be factually correct. Clearly this documentary is not.

Dr. Newman goes on to say that An Inconvenient Truth belongs in a “Political Drama” category, but I disagree. In order to be a political drama, the film would have to admit that it is, in fact, fictional. But the film is called An Inconvenient Truth, and it attempts to pass itself off as fact, not fiction, even while it, ah, “exaggerates” things a bit. That’s called propaganda.

Gore even admits to overstating things:

“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous [global warming] is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.”

He knows that his film misrepresents the actual danger, but that does not stop him from labeling it a documentary and offering 50,000 copies of the film to the National Science Teachers Association (which, by the way, declined). This goes far beyond documentary or political drama. An Inconvenient Truth is a convenient lie for Gore, whose concern over global warming apparently is not large enough to stop him from living in a mansion which uses much more energy than the average home, or from flying around in private jets. And yet, somehow this man has done something worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.

The Academy has not yet responded to Dr. Newman’s letter. I am doubtful that it will do much. I’m doubtful this blog post will do much. However, I’m about as sure that Mr. Gore does not deserve this Peace Prize as I am sure that Live Earth had quite possibly the largest carbon footprint of any event to date—which is to say I’m certain of it.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 8:07 am in Politics. You can subscribe to the comment feed to follow replies or leave a trackback from your own site.