As pointed out by
Eric Pooley of Time Magazine, Al Gore's Peace Prize will be a subject of intense debate. One camp will hail it as deserved recognition, at long last, of the severity of climate change and the urgency with which it needs to be tackled. Everyone else will call it either: a.) SlightlyRidiculous (since there were more deserving candidates and/or causes) or b.) Totally and Completely Ridiculous (since the climate change-world peace link is a myth or worse, since climate change
itself is a myth).
You probably know by now which camp I belong to.
And therefore can imagine my irritation, annoyance and frustration when I encountered
this article on The Telegraph, entitled 'What has Al Gore done for world peace?' by Damian Thompson. What annoyed me more than the article itself (which at least made some attempt at pulling together a series of 'facts') was the string of absurd reactions to it in the Comments section. Two major themes were - Climate change is not real / Climate change is not linked to peace (or lack thereof).
Below is my response. I have deliberately left out the all-important incident-and-example rhetoric, since people tend to twist every piece of evidence to suit their own particular perspective. The thread I have proposed below has already been written about extensively. My summary of it is simply a compressed version:
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A theme that should ring true, and close to home, for all the Yankee cowboys here (suitably simplified to match the level of intelligence I see on this forum). Try, if you can, to wrap your minds around this -
1. An important driver of human conflict is intense competition over scarce (or highly desired resources)
2. Climate change entails a change in the distribution of some highly valuable natural resources - like freshwater.
3. The resulting poverty is likely to drive areas of scarcity (Africa, parts of Asia, etc.,) into further sociopolitical unrest.
4. Therefore, an important driver PREVENTING unrest is the mitigation of climate change, or at least adaptation to it.
5. Education is the first step towards changing policies, since we (and by we, I do not mean the United States) live in a (supposedly) democracy-loving world.
Therefore the link between education and peace.
Therefore the conspicuous lack of peace within America and American 'foreign policy'.
Therefore the Peace Prize for an environmental educator.
Geddit?
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An Allegory, El Greco
Diana and her Nymphs, Robert Burns
Francesca da Rimni, William Dyce
Wandering Shadows, Peter Grahm
The Three Ages of Man, Titian
The Sick Rose, William Blake
The Hill of the Winds, Sir David Young Cameron
The Death of Adonis, Giuseppe Mazzuoli
St. Bride, John Duncan
