NPR: Some Experts Say Gore Likely to Win Peace Prize

Some Experts Say Gore Likely to Win Peace Prize

Al Gore ... former senator and vice president, presidential nominee, best-selling author, Academy Award winner ... Nobel Peace Prize winner?

That's the speculation out of Norway, Reuters reports. Gore and other climate campaigners lead experts' choices for the award that will be announced Oct. 12. Two Norwegian parliamentarians nominated Gore and Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, who has helped show how global warming affects Arctic peoples, to share the prize. "I think they are likely winners this year," said Stein Toennesson, director of Oslo's International Peace Research Institute and a long-time Nobel Peace Prize watcher.

Toennesson says the committee also could choose to award the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

If the award is given for climate work, it will "accentuate a shift to reward work outside traditional peacekeeping and reinforce the link between peace and the environment," Reuters writes.

But David Kuo at Beliefnet says he doesn't get it.

I'm sorry, I don't see it. I'm very, very pro-environment. I believe we are to be careful stewards of God's creation. I still don't see Al Gore on the list of potential nominees for the Peace Prize let alone being its recipient. What has he done? He made a very good documentary. He is clearly committed to fighting for the Earth. But world peace? I'm sorry, I'm not there.

Others with a chance include former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari for decades of peace mediation work; dissident Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Do for his pro-democracy efforts; Russian human rights lawyer Lida Yusupova, who has fought for victims of war in Chechnya; and Rebiya Kadeer, an advocate for China's Uighur minority.

3:56 PM ET | 10- 5-2007 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

Is the notion of Peace a necessary construct in imagining the world before human existence, when there was "nature" only in all its changes and manifestations? The idea of Peace becomes important only when we view the negative effects of human action now and throughout history. So any real important movement toward a responsible relationship with a realm that needed no concept of Peace, is a movement toward the true essence of Peace itself. That is to say, sadly or gladly, promoting Peace is courageously recognizing and then energetically pursuing a reversal or negative human effects on the Natural World of Peace.
If all wars were to end but we continued to destroy nature, would we really be at Peace?
Bless the true Peace Makers, bless those among us that would dare to dream that we could truly become a beneficial part of this Incredible Unique World.

Sent by Walt Baenziger | 7:55 PM ET | 10-05-2007

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