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Wuzburg, Germany: Last week the Philippine bureau
chief of Reuters news agency called me in Germany on my cell phone
the day the Noble Peace Prize was to be announced. I was on a
speaking tour advocating children’s rights and fair trade. The
journalist was checking my number and asked if I had heard any news
about winning the Nobel Peace Prize since I was nominated three
times. “Nothing could be so unlikely at this time,” I replied.
The Nobel Peace
Prize award committee members, based in Norway (the rest of the
prizes are given out in Sweden), give the prize to those they truly
believe have made an international impact on issues affecting peace
and where the prize will do the most good and raise awareness and
promote peace throughout the world. They deserve a prize themselves.
Later, driving to
the venue of my next speaking engagement, I heard over the car radio
the great news that Al Gore had been awarded this most prestigious
of prizes. He shares the prize with the more than 2,000 scientists
on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Former US
Vice-President Al Gore, 59, who lost the presidential election by a
much questioned decision of the US Supreme Court that declared in
2000 that his 537 “missing” votes was official, has campaigned
to inform the world about the dangers of climate change to humanity
and world peace.
Al Gore was much
criticized and maligned during the past seven years and written off
as an eccentric misguided crank by President George Bush as the
irrelevant “ozone man” for campaigning so hard for action on
stopping global warming. He recently won an academy award for his
documentary An Inconvenient Truth that told of the dangers of
climate change. The Nobel committee has said of him, “He is
probably the single individual who has done most to create worldwide
understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.”
The Nobel Peace
Prize has vindicated Al Gore and strengthened the truth and urgency
of his message to humanity. He tells us that we have to change our
wasteful ways and deal immediately with the causes of global warming
and reduce the emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere.
We can all do our
part, join rallies, sign petitions, phone our representatives to
pressure government to act. We can do much to save energy, too.
It is these
industrial agricultural and vehicle gasses, especially CO2, most
coming from the coal-fired power stations and factories of the
developed and wealthy nations (China and India, too) that are
blocking the escape of the earth’s heat back into space.
The sun’s rays are
penetrating the polluted atmosphere and instead of reflected back
out again from the rapidly melting ice caps they are being absorbed
in the oceans and heating the planet. The earth is like a pudding in
a microwave oven, it is being cooked by rays without letup. The
Arctic is melting away.
Al Gore and the UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have verified this and put
to shame those powerful industrialists and the world leaders who
have ignored the inconvenient truth and brushed aside the call for
action.
The effects of
climate change will be catastrophic in the years to come. There will
be grave economic disruption as sea levels rise and millions of
people lose their land, homes and livelihoods. Conflicts and
cross-border wars are inevitable as people will fight for the ever
decreasing supply of water as the Himalayan and South American ice
caps melt and the year-round water supply disappears, most of it
evaporating or pouring into the sea.
Then after the
drought the warm oceans will bring massive storms and torrential
rain. The floods and the destruction of crops will follow on an
unprecedented scale leading to mass hunger and more conflict. This
doomsday scenario is what the UN scientists and Al Gore are
correctly predicting and the Nobel Peace Prize committee has
acknowledged and confirmed. To stop climate change, restoring the
balance to the planet is what will bring stability and peace. That’s
why Al Gore justly deserves the Nobel Peace Prize this year and the
rest of us nominees don’t.
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