Gore and Watt-Cloutier for Nobel Peace Prize!
As the recent blogs are all about th environment, the hot topic for our next federal election will be the environment, it's also a key topic for the Nobel Peace Prize. Al Gore pushed for environmental measures while vice-president, and he has used his position to get politicians and the greater public to understand the effects of climate change. His Oscar nominated An Inconvenient Truth brought world wide awareness on the topic. Gore makes a great role model and shows the world the importance of climate change, and reminds the public that not all politicians are bad.
posted by IngeniousGene at 7:03 AM
4 Comments:
You do know that a Nobel Prize nomination means absolutely nothing. The way it works is that a Swedish academic puts forward a name and then a comitee decides who will win. But this means anyone who works as a professor in Sweden can made a nomination. No offence to Carolyn and Dr. Nesbit-Larkin, but are they really capable of decided who has made the biggest contribution to peace this year? I for one cannot understand why some dumb idiot keeps nominating Bono for it. All he ever does is go around and cry about how people are dying in Africa, and, FTI U2 has just released a new CD which you should all go out and buy.
If you look at Bono's "Charity" you will find that its mission statement says "DATA calls on the governments of the world's wealthy nations — the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan — to put more resources towards Africa, and to adopt policy that helps rather than hinders Africa in achieving long-term prosperity." - They don't do anything on the ground. All they do is give Bono a soap box to get on to cry about Aids in Africa while pimping ipods. Its just a lobby group - how in hell is that worthy of a Nobel Prize (or TIME man of the year for that matter).
So, I suggest everybody just do illegal downloads of U2 music from now on.
In regards to the topic of this post, I agree it is good that Gore has been nominated. The intricasies of the nomination process aside, Gore has been able to make global warming and climate change an issue in the United States - that alone is an achivement worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. His nomination simply gives more bite to the issue.
With regards to the second post, the same is true of Bono. Whether or not you agree with his tactics of doing it, Bono has been able to engage people in more open discussions about the issues that face the majority of people in Africa every day. Canada and the rich nations of the world need to act more responsibly when it comes to Africa and its people.
Bono 'pimps' iPods to gain an income; what he uses that income for is why he should be nominated.
I don't really agree with how Bono's "pimping" of ipods or a lot of his tactics, I do give him credit for making more people aware of the crisis in Africa. However, I think a lot of people buy into his campaigns because it's "cool" and not for the real reason. However, the money's being raised. If Bono had been up for a Nobel peace prize i wouldn't have posted it, as I think his campaign promotes the youth to be trendy and cool and maybe not even care for the real cause.
I think that Gore has done an amazing job in raising awareness and I truly respect the effort he has made. A lot of people have seen the Inconvenient Truth and have looked at things in a new way and have made some lifestyle changes, even if just being more conscious to turn out the lights when you're not in a room.
As far as the nominations process, there are a lot of world renoun professors with great insight who are perfectly capable of making such a decision. Also, Swedish academics are not the only ones who nominate:
-members of national assemblies and governments
-members of international courts of law
-university chancellors; university professors of social science, history, philosophy, law and theology
-leaders of peace research institutes and institutes of foreign affairs
-former Nobel Peace Prize laureates;
-board members of organisations that have received the Nobel Peace Prize
-present and past members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
-former advisers at the Norwegian Nobel Institute
If this list isn't sufficient, then who is capable of making such a decision? I think these people are more than capable.
You lead to a question of how to we award people ? I think just about every country in the world has some kind of system to do this...here we have the Order of Canada which is given to everybody under the sun. At the end of the day, what do little trinkets matter to anything ?
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