Right Wing Efforts Continue to Label Nobel as Political
BBSNews 2007-10-13 -- Al Gore was named as a recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize and even as renewed efforts are underway to draft Gore to run as US president in 2008, "conservatives" call Gore a "liar."
It's obvious that the GOP is bereft of any sense of urgency about global climate change, including the extreme reliance on Oil. The Wall Street Journal in reporting on former Vice President Gore's Nobel win point out that the prize is also shared by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, note also:
"The Web sites of most of the Republican candidates don't mention global warming or the environment on their issues lists. The exceptions are Arizona Sen. John McCain, who has led efforts against global warming in the Senate, and Fred Thompson, a former Tennessee senator."
The animosity towards Mr. Gore is absolutely seething in some quarters. A political hit piece from The Republican American flatly calls Gore a liar:
"Al Gore now has a Nobel Peace Prize to pair with his Academy Award for "An Inconvenient Truth." But neither accolade makes him any less a liar. As it did when it gave the prize to Jimmy Carter in 2002, the Norwegian Nobel Committee honored Mr. Gore and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to make a left-wing political statement."
Calling Mr. Gore a liar pales in comparison to the piece in Canada's Financial Times where Peter Foster claims that Mr. Gore and those who believe that climate change is being negatively affected by human energy use byproducts, may be seeking to demonize people who don't -- and worse may even commit physical violence against them. Foster writes:
"Hence Al Gore's and the IPCC's idea of a good cause involves -- as with Mr. Strong -- demonization of Western lifestyles and promoting the belief that, until we change, we deserve to be attacked morally, and perhaps even physically. It's a funny basis for a Peace Prize."
Hence the 'Times writer lapses into a "straw man" argument. One that sadly often works on those who are duped by them. Foster writes "demonization of Western lifestyles" -- even though that is not fact-based reality. People who support keeping Planet Earth healthy by not filling her with noxious fumes that she finds as unhealthy as a human would three or four packs of cigarettes a day; they do not want to stop life as Western Consumers know it.
The Human Race itself will be halted in its development, perhaps harmed as a result, unless the denizens of the planet come together in a universal solution for alternative energy sources that do not negatively spew harmful waste products into the atmosphere.
There's nothing political about it. Everyone on the planet is affected by the reality that for all world economies to move forward there is going to have to be found a replacement for fuels that are doing the most damage.
Those that are attacking former Vice President Al Gore for his world-wide view that imbued him with the vision to think of the planet as a whole, should take a look at some basic common sense. It stands to reason that pumping ever more huge amounts of noxious gases and other waste byproducts into an atmosphere that we are all taught about in grade school as being made up of important and specific constituents in a special life supporting balance, just might be a bad idea and it may negatively affect the entire planet.
It's not driving or flying from point A to point B in a fast and efficient manner that is the problem, it is the harmful byproducts that are coming from those activities that cry out for a solution in the same manner as does pollution from manufacturing in developing countries.
Perhaps those against finding real solutions for the real problems are simply concerned that if a viable and equitable energy solution is found as a result of global awareness spurred by Nobel winners Gore and the UN, and others like them -- a global solution owned globally -- those who decided to stay behind with 20th Century thinking would be left out.
And where's the profit in that?