It's Gore

As expected, Al Gore is a joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Canadian activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier was appearently snubbed.)

I would have preferred to see the Prize go to some of the people putting their lives on the line to fight tyranny in Zimbabwe, Burma or the Middle East, but we knew this was coming. So will it catapult him into the Presidential race? Time's star-struck Eric Pooley doesn't think so:

...[Gore] put himself in position to win the Nobel by committing to an issue bigger than himself — the fight to save the planet. If he runs for president now, he'll be hauling himself back up onto that dusty old pedestal, signaling that he is, after all, the most important thing in his world. Sure, he'd say he was doing it because he feels a moral obligation to intervene in a time of unparalleled crisis. But running for president is by definition an act of hubris, and Gore has spent the past couple of years defying his ego and sublimating himself to a larger goal. Running for president would mean returning to a role he'd already transcended. He'd turn into — again — just another politician, when a lot of people thought he might be something better than that.

And he'd be risking a hard-won happiness. Gore is happier these days because he is living the kind of life he always wanted to lead. He's happier these days because he is free from the excruciating requirements of electoral politics, the glad-handing and the money-grubbing that drove him deeper into himself the more he was forced to reach out. And, finally, he's happier now because he has been vindicated. The Nobel is an acknowledgment that Gore was right about the greatest global threat we face (and that this is the year when most everyone else finally figured out he was right). Winning the Peace Prize may not place Gore among the global saints, the Nelson Mandelas of the world; but it does place him among the laureates who are beloved in some quarters and loathed in others — those highly charged Prizewinners like Jimmy Carter.

Damian P.

Mark adds: Gore gets gored in the Daily Telegraph:

What has Al Gore done for world peace?

I nominate Mr Suzuki as the most sanctimonious Canadian pork belly.

Posted by markc at October 12, 2007 07:18 AM