by
Michael S. Rozeff Simply unbelievable! Al Gore has won a Nobel Peace Prize for his "work" on global warming. Crackpot Prize would be a better name. Equally unbelievable is that his co-winner is the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is the outfit that produced the biased report on global warming earlier this year that one scientist after another keeps debunking. Well, maybe not so unbelievable in view of the past leanings of those who decide on the prizewinners. Why not resurrect Al Gore? He, after all, was Bush II’s opponent and even got more votes. What better way to make a veiled statement against Bush II? And what better way to endorse the U.N.? And what better way to feel all fuzzy and good about addressing a problem (?) that affects all mankind? And how can one feel more godly than by bestowing a prize from on high on behalf of every sinner who breathes out carbon dioxide? What better way to offer new life for all these sinners? And, perhaps most of all, what better way to endorse environmentalism and connect it with something that everyone favors – peace? So maybe this award is not so unbelievable after all. It is just business as usual among the denizens of political correctness-land. Political correctness is, after all, an offshoot of Western social democracy. It comes under the heading of cultural Marxism. It is an attempt to homogenize every human being and control their thinking and expression. A Nobel Peace Prize for global warming squelches all dissenting scientific voices in favor of the politically correct view, which, it so happens, also happens to be the dominant statist and social democratic view. The states of the world simply must control carbon dioxide emissions. The Nobel Peace Price this year is a vote for political correctness, environmentalism, world government, and government in general, all rolled into one. Gore’s win was a slam-dunk. It matters little that converting people to the false faith of manmade global warming has nothing whatsoever to do with peace. If anything, it’s a call for the opposite of peace. It’s a call for governments to force people to flush trillions of dollars down the drain in a hopelessly misguided effort to lower the earth’s temperature by one-tenth of a degree. It only matters that it can be sold as relating to the good of all mankind, even if it’s for the bad of all mankind. I should think that LewRockwell.com and Antiwar.com have done more for peace than Al Gore or the U.N.’s panel. I should think there are dozens and dozens of outfits doing more for peace than these two co-winners. They do not, however, make a full-time job out of using issues for their own political and monetary advantage. Honesty had better be its own reward, because an awful lot of dishonesty gets over in the world of publicity, issue-mongering, politics, and payoffs. This is enough to turn me into a cynic. I already knew that the Nobel Prizes were hardly worth my attention. This has been clear in economics and literature for a long time, and I’ve tuned them out for quite awhile. I didn’t know enough to judge the ones in science and medicine. As for peace prizes, I gave them some benefit of doubt even though they’ve been a decidedly mixed bag, including the likes of Gorbachev, Arafat, Kofi Annan, and Jimmy Carter. Obviously, I need to be less compromising and more strict from now on. I simply was too easy-going. These freaking (i.e., lousy) clowns are taking over the world! In fact, they already have. This event is radicalizing me. No more Mr. Nice Guy! These clowns have the world’s microphone and loudspeakers in their hands. I’d rather hear rock music, and I hate rock music. I almost feel sorry that I hit the link on my screen that says News. What foundation does not eventually fall into the hands of bureaucrats whose minds are liberal and whose philosophies diametrically oppose those of its founder? What great danger lurks for philanthropists who cannot control the inane philosophies that grip their creations within decades of their founding! There must be a better way to leave a monument behind to one’s accumulation of wealth. It would appear that the Preacher is right on target. What did he say? "18Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. 19And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity." Mr. Nobel should have read these words and heeded them. I intend to die penniless. Al Gore’s presidential fortunes have been slowly rising from a low of 5 on Intrade, and on October 4 he took off like a rocket on his way to 13. Evidently, the smart and/or inside money anticipated this event. Who among the Nobel circles leaked this information? Who among them placed some bets of their own, I wonder? To an unknown but significant extent, Nobel Prizes reflect both lobbying efforts and nominations. The committees send out thousands of letters to academicians, government officials, and others, asking for nominations. Administrators lobby for the stars on their staff. Individuals lobby for themselves. Sometimes a bandwagon gets rolling. In April of this year, Al Gore made a speech in Oslo. "Al Gore was in Oslo a week ago giving his 'inconvenient truth' global warming speech to a crowd that included the chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee. Critics are saying he was there to lobby the committee because he has been nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Norwegian members of parliament Børge Brende and Heidi Sørensen, who joined in their nomination despite political differences, (Heidi Sørensen is a member of the Socialist Left Party), jointly say that global climate is a fight for peace."
October 15, 2007 Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York. Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com |
Gore’s
win is a function of his lobbying, nominations, political correctness,
and the prevalent beliefs of those who selected him. It has nothing
to do with peace, and everything to do with the promotion of a very
damaging environmentalism.