OPINION:
So it is that Al Gore wins the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, along with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. At least he didn’t get the award for physics or chemistry.
What does the global warming movement’s crusader-in-chief, Mr. Gore, he of the 20-room, eight-bathroom estate in Nashville, the one with the $30,000 annual utility bill, who jets around the planet in private airplanes scolding others for overconsumption, have to do with international peace? Those who wonder have only this to ponder from the Nobel Committee: “Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind… There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars.” In a world still afflicted by real, actual wars, not just hypothetical ones, this statement tells us everything we need to know about the Nobel committee’s approach. Its trendy politics did not end with Yasser Arafat’s 1994 Nobel, nor Jimmy Carter’s in 2002.
More than a century of Nobel Prizes have resulted in honors for many worthy recipients; the world remembers great laureates like Theodore Roosevelt and Martin Luther King. But there have also been duds. We should not forget world federalists and pacifists whose movements floundered and drifted into well-deserved obscurity. Trendiness being historically of a piece with the world’s preeminent awards, no one should be surprised. Give Mr. Gore his time with the glitterati, and lean back and observe the unrestrained Mr. Gore. This man regularly exhorts, “this is not a political issue, it is a moral one,” as his mansion and jets chug petroleum. Always, things are excused by “carbon offsets.” Let the others eat cake.
Make no mistake: With “it’s a moral issue” line Mr. Gore calls a wide swath of the American public immoral. In one July survey, nearly 30 percent of Americans say that they do not even believe that global warming is happening. You 90 million, friends, are Mr. Gore’s immoral Americans.
This Nobel already has some fretting. As Damian Thompson wrote in the Daily Telegraph last week, “The former U.S. Vice-President has already taken over from Michael Moore as the most sanctimonious lardbutt Yank on the planet. Can you imagine what he’ll be like now that the Norwegian Nobel committee has given him the prize?”
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