The Most Non-prolific Advocate of Peace
Apropos my recent post on environmental pollution caused by militarism comes a critique of the Al Gore Peace Prize. To wit:
The Prize would have been linked to the environment if it has been awarded to someone who struggles against military or other violent influence on the global environment: military pollution, thousands of bases and exercises destroying nature, deliberate environmental warfare, militarization of space and the oceans, and - of course - nuclear weapons that, if used, would create more heat than global warming.As the article notes, irrespective of his "climate-awareness initiatives," his foreign policy record is hardly one of peace -- he simply was not a vocal opponent against the numerous aggressive bombing campaigns waged by the military complex during his term as the vice-president or even senator.
For instance, his purported message of peace was notably absent while missiles and bombs were detonated throughout the Balkan states. The atmospheric pollution and fallout as well as direct environmental destruction caused by these explosives will arguably leave long lasting scars for both the people living there as well as the fauna and flora (just as nuclear tests jettisoned hundreds of tons of radioactive debris across the globe).
And what about agent orange and other defoliating techniques that are not only toxic to the environment, but also lethal on animals and humans? Where was his moral indignation towards the use of these herbicides?
See also: The Myrdal Mystery
Comments (20)
Not to mention that the DoD is, by its own admission, the world's largest consumer of oil... using more than most countries.
Published: October 14, 2007 10:47 AM
As the article notes, irregardless
=(
Published: October 14, 2007 11:45 AM
I just write what the fortune cookies say...
Published: October 14, 2007 11:55 AM
I had a difficult time reading past "irregardless." :-(
Published: October 14, 2007 1:28 PM
Is this really too much of a surprise? Keep in mind that the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the likes of Woodrow Wilson and Arafat as well, while never once going to someone like Ghandi. It's similar to the way the Presidential Medal of Freedom goes to someone like John Kenneth Galbraith rather than someone like Murray N. Rothbard or Ludwig von Mises. It's fits in well with my philosophy that all awards are overrated.
Published: October 14, 2007 2:31 PM
Forgive me, above poster. Was not Ghandi's movement the direct cause a millions upon millions of Hindu and Muslim persons who were forced into segregation?
(Perhaps I am wrong, but that is my initial impression)
Published: October 14, 2007 2:37 PM
Jeez, I wish people would get over it. Questioning the award because he hasn't spoken up about agent orange? And where was Mandela when East Timorians were being slaughtered?
Published: October 14, 2007 6:07 PM
Okay, so maybe Ghandi gets the award for being the Nicest Oppressor. :)
But anyway, no one wrote more in favour of peace than Mises, and no one offered more cogent arguments. Why then did the great man never receive the award he deserved?
Published: October 14, 2007 6:07 PM
I thought that they had banned agent orange. It killed my grandfather. He was in Vietnam and it gave him lung cancer.
Published: October 14, 2007 6:11 PM
The Mahatama was one of those wierd Hindus who took the Gospel of Christ literally.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
Gandhi was obviosuly misguided unlike the real Christians (Churchill, Hitler, Woodrow Wilson, the Portugese and Spanish)
The Nobel Committee was surely correct in not awarding the prize to this half naked fakir
Published: October 14, 2007 6:41 PM
Tim, you are right to point out that in awarding the Peace Prize to Gore the Nobel Committee were forced to overlook the warts of the Clinton administration - but it's rather obvious that the Norwegians decided to overlook that because of their desire to send a message that they prefer to see the US actively involved in cooperative efforts to address problems that are of concern to many, rather than in destructive and counterproductive wars that distract from other problems. So this is both an implicit (and well-deserved) criticism of Bush and a statement that climate change is a suffciently serious issue that any past sins by Gore can be overlooked.
For the time being, the US remains the 800 lb. gorilla in the room; it is understandable that Europeans would try to coax the gorilla in behaving in ways that they consider beneficial to their interests.
Not sure what you're driving at on Agent Orange or "atmospheric pollution and fallout" from our bombing of Serbia - did Gore have anything to do with the Vietnam war, and what lingering problems hwere caused by bombing in Serbia?
Regards,
TT
Published: October 15, 2007 2:06 AM
greg and TokyoTom,
One of the problems is that while Gore served in Vietnam, he has never lambasted that aggressive occupation or the environmental consequences from it.
Not that he has to, but that would seem like an obvious target for someone trying to build-up their "Peace-filled" resume... as have several members of congress (like Ron Paul).
As far as Serbia, check out: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_11_20/ai_57042499
Also, see: http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/10/14/is-al-gore-the-prince-of-peace/
Published: October 15, 2007 2:17 AM
Tim, it's kinda hard to blame either Agent Organge or the Serbia bombing on Gore. (Your last link just cycles us back to the Oberg piece, BTW.)
But yes, his "peace" credentials are still mighty slim, unless one pays attention to the conservative IPCC digests - which none of the skeptic scientists finds uncredible - and the more recent findings that the climate is changing more rapidly than anyone has expected. http://www.carbonequity.info/PDFs/Arctic.pdf
This concern is what led Bush's father to make the US a party to the UN Framework COnvention on Climate Change - and which his son has declined to abrogate and now seems to be seriously intereted in breathing new life into. Perhaps he will spare us his Midas touch.
Published: October 15, 2007 8:50 AM
Gore was one of the few Democrats to strongly back the first Gulf War. Evil, evil guy.
Published: October 15, 2007 6:57 PM
First, it's not Ghandi, it's Gandhi.
2) No, Gandhi's movement did not cause the segregation of Hindus and Muslims - in fact, Gandhi was strongly opposed to segregation.
3) No one has ever succeeded in a civil disobedience movement of such a scale as Gandhi.
4) Gandhi was nominated for the Nobel peace prize five times, in 1937, 1938, 1939,1947 and finally in 1948, few days before his assassination. However he was not awarded the Nobel Prize because he was “neither a real politician nor a humanitarian relief worker". The Executive Director for the Nobel Foundation Michael Sohlam has gone on record to state that not awarding him the Peace Prize was "a big regret" of the Nobel Foundation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi#Nobel_Peace_Prize
Published: October 15, 2007 9:35 PM
I still think the true credit goes to Katherine Harris, who at crucial point of history switched the personal destinies of Al Gore and George W. Bush. After all, it's not the man, its the office, and as Acton said, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." So be of good cheer Big Al! In fact, out of decency he should simply turn over the prize money to Harris. After all, its a Tolstoian universe...and I don't mean in the sense of one governed by the pacifism of Tolstoi's disciple Ghandi!
Published: October 16, 2007 3:03 AM
"But yes, his "peace" credentials are still mighty slim, unless one pays attention to the conservative IPCC digests - which none of the skeptic scientists finds uncredible"
Really now. How does paying attention to the IPCC make Gore's "peace" credentials less slim? What does catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory have to do with peace? Not a thing. In fact, the policies advocated by Gore and his ilk are very unpeaceful involving as they do coercion, legalized plunder, and fomenting special interest warfare through statist politics.
"- and the more recent findings that the climate is changing more rapidly than anyone has expected. http://www.carbonequity.info/PDFs/Arctic.pdf"
Need I point out that findings over such a short period of time do not guarantee what future trends will be like? It is simply not scientific to assume a brief trend will continue simply because it would conform to one's pre-existing ideology. At present, attributing recent Arctic sea ice melt primarily to anthropogenic global warming is a nonscientific stretch of the imagination. Decades from now maybe we could say whether or not AGW was the cause. But the cause may well be natural cycles, as Nghiem of NASA and Polyakov et al.'s research suggest.
Published: October 16, 2007 3:14 PM
For those who are interested, the below article by Alexander Cockburn is highly critical of Gore's Nobel peace prize and is linked in today's issue of LRC.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn10132007.html
The article is critical of Gore's actual record regarding peace, and his popularization of the scientifically tenuous AGW theory.
Published: October 17, 2007 7:36 AM
Dennis, I like Cockburn's criticisms of Gore with respect to Iraq, but on AGW it's clear that Cockburn doesn't know his *ss from his elbow, as we've discussed before.
Geoffrey, thanks for your questions and comments.
"How does paying attention to the IPCC make Gore's "peace" credentials less slim? What does catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory have to do with peace? Not a thing. In fact, the policies advocated by Gore and his ilk are very unpeaceful involving as they do coercion, legalized plunder, and fomenting special interest warfare through statist politics."
First, Gore has done us all a favor by throwing more prominence on a serious commons problem that requires international cooperation. I've made this point before many times, but Ron Bailey of Reason has just done it for me here: http://reason.com/news/show/122960.html
My follow-up comments to Ron are here, BTW: http://mises.com/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/10/17/reason-congratulations-to-al-gore.aspx
As for the IPCC, what's one prerequisite for obtaining effective international cooperation? A shared understanding of the facts, certainly.
Is it your contention that ignoring commons failures and letting them fester is a better way to bring about peace than bringing them out to the open? Have you not noticed that those who are expected to bear most of the costs of climate change are precisely those most vulnerable and least able to prepare for them?
I surely don't intend to defend all of Gore's proposals, but have you noted that doing NOTHING on climate change is also in effect sanctioning legalized plunder and fomenting special interest warfare?
"Need I point out that findings over such a short period of time do not guarantee what future trends will be like? It is simply not scientific to assume a brief trend will continue simply because it would conform to one's pre-existing ideology. At present, attributing recent Arctic sea ice melt primarily to anthropogenic global warming is a nonscientific stretch of the imagination. Decades from now maybe we could say whether or not AGW was the cause. But the cause may well be natural cycles"
Thank you. But while we have no certainty about all the working of the climate system, we know that we continue to add heat to it, via GHGs and albedo changes (soot etc.). Surely you are not suggesting we ignore that, or ignore the startling trends re: the Arctic ice pack (apparently now locked into an albedo feedback loop that will bring us an ice-free summewr Arctic ocean for the first time in something like a million years), acclerating Greenland melt and accelerating sea level rises?
"Decades from now maybe we could say whether or not AGW was the cause." And how much more further momentum will we added to the climate system while we wait for the outcome, even as we know how much inertia is in the climate system and in our energy systems?
It makes sense to start acting now, gradually.
Published: October 17, 2007 9:10 AM
One factor that is not mentioned much is that the Western countries and the U.N. may well attempt to use the AGW issue to slow down the industrialization of developing countries, especially China. This is a nice, slick way to hamper your economic competitors.
However, history is littered with examples and logic leads to the conclusion that economic interventionism results in tensions and confrontations that eventually erupt into warfare. This represents yet another reason why Al Gore clearly does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
Published: October 17, 2007 7:25 PM