Al Gore and the Nobel Peace Prize

I got an e-mail from Al Gore today! It included his acceptance speech for the Nobel peace prize. You can read the whole speech here, but I wanted to highlight some of the excellent points. I think this year the Nobel committee showed real insight - no more politicians that fought wars and then ended it, but a real understanding that environmental needs is what life on Earth is all about. yesterday we watched this great eye-opener movie about consumerism and Earth's Resources, but I don't have the link here. But you should all watch it, it will make a difference in how you think about stuff! Right, AREA?

We have dealt with Alfred Nobel before on this blog, and Al Gore talks about him too:

"Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’s work, unfairly labeling him “The Merchant of Death” because of his invention – dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace. [...]

However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: “They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.”

So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.

As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong.

We are what is wrong, and we must make it right."

Read more of the great truths in the speech on algore.com
Congratulations to all scientists in the world!

Our little personal statement for more peace on Earth and better sustainability will soon be posted on this blog. I just have to download some photos first...