October 14, 2007
The Nobel Peace Prize IV Posted by Alexander Burns at 04:25 PM EST Mr. Gordon makes a new argument in his latest post. He writes that Al Gore is different from other Nobel recipients, like Norman Borlaug and Muhammad Yunus, who have won without literally working toward peace because his most important potential contributions are, at this point, largely unrealized. This strikes me as a fairly reasonable point: If we’re going to have what is, essentially, a Nobel Humanitarian Prize, perhaps it makes sense to recognize the individuals who have made the greatest concrete progress toward achieving their humanitarian goals. From this perspective, Borlaug and Yunus are clearly worthier honorees than Gore. From another perspective, though, the Nobel has frequently been given to people whose most significant contributions are, on a basic level, still just potential contributions. Frank Kellogg won the Nobel Peace Prize the year after the Kellogg-Briand Pact, banning war, was signed. Nicholas Murray Butler was a joint recipient of the prize two years later (with Jane Addams) for his work promoting the pact. So, in three years you had two men honored for the same treaty, which had not yet had any demonstrable impact in discouraging war. As we all know, the world erupted in bloodshed a few years later. Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho won the prize in 1973 (the latter declined it) for the Paris Peace Accords. Fortunately, in this case, the Nobel Committee was rather more farsighted than it was in its optimistic assessment of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Just look at the lasting, two-state solution that endures in Vietnam. Oh, wait . . . My point here is not to berate the Nobel Committee for a few judgments that seem silly in retrospect. My point is to say that Al Gore’s “paper profit” is at least as significant as those of numerous other Nobel honorees. For what it’s worth, I’d say he’s much more likely to end up a metaphorically wealthy man than Frank Kellogg or Henry Kissinger did. I have no interest in debating Mr. Gordon on the issue of climate change, or responding, by proxy, to the criticisms of a marginally significant British judge. (Although I will, incidentally, note the irony of many conservatives’ appealing to the jurisprudence of a—gasp!—foreign legal authority. Imagine if a liberal used such an argumentative tactic on a subject like the death penalty.) On the subject of climate change, the science is in. The planet’s getting warmer, and a leading cause is manmade carbon emissions. Estimates can disagree over whether climate change will raise sea levels by one foot or twenty. But sea levels are only one metric by which to gauge the impact of climate change, and flooding is only one of the many negative consequences humanity would face if it decided to ignore this problem. On this particular subject, we might want to try and see the forest for the drunken trees. As to the question of whether the Norwegian Parliament or the Norwegian Nobel Commitee awards the Peace Prize, Mr. Gordon suggests that this is “a distinction without a whole lot of difference.” I’d argue otherwise. Legislative bodies, such as the U.S. Congress and the Norwegian Parliament, are driven by electoral concerns. Bodies they appoint, like the 9/11 Commission, or help appoint, like the Supreme Court, are much less susceptible to such motivations. For people who wish to devalue the Nobel Peace Prize, or to cast aspersions on the worthiness of its recipients, the notion that craven Scandinavian socialist politicos decide who wins it is a useful misconception to spread. I’m certainly not saying that Mr. Gordon intended to do anything like this, but I do think this was an important mistake to correct.
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