Richard Zurawski

In all the world, there is probably no more prestigious award that we have, a recognition of achievement and innovation of the best and brightest who see and have seen further than the rest of us.

This year Al Gore shared in the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to publicize the need to stem the tide of human induced climate change. Perhaps there were more deserving people, people who have had a greater impact in the climate change arena, but I am not sure who they might have been.

I am an unabashed fan of the man who might have been president. I have heard others deride his achievements, saying that he was the recipient merely because of his political stature. But consider this. Climate change is a silent killer and the numbers who are affected, who die and suffer because of the effects of the changes that we have induced on our frail and fragile planet probably now number in the millions. When a heat wave, or a hurricane, or typhoon, drought flood or any of the other myriad of weather disasters strike we now have to ask is it because of our activities? Is it because of our relentless drive to drive, fly, play with fossil fuels and consume energy at an unprecedented rate that creates this havoc? Most likely it is. The possibility that it is part of a natural cycle is now virtually, totally discounted. Only the hardest of craniums still beat that contrarian drum. So thank you Al for helping to make a dent, a divot in those who would deny, deny, deny.

And its not just people who are in peril. Ecological disaster induced by climate change is but a heartbeat away for thousands of our co-species who have no choice but to whither and die in the face of changing ecological conditions. Whether polar bear or nematode or conifer, they are all sitting ducks to our whim and fancy to fire up the combustion engine and pretend that it has no consequences.

So, even if there were more deserving peace prize recipients, I still applaud the Nobel committee for their selection. By choosing Mr. Gore, they raised the awareness of global climate change another notch. And maybe the nay sayers, the obfuscators, the upstream swimmers, the soap boxer in need of attention, will be pushed back a bit, into the darkness shared by Holocaust Deniers, Flat Earthers and Religious Cults.

Thank you Al Gore. You do deserve the Nobel prize.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 6:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.