Al Gore Wins the Nobel Prize

by Chuck Hall

Earlier this week, former US vice-president Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He shared the prize with the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The prize was awarded by the Nobel committee in Norway for Gore’s work in promoting awareness of the dangers of global climate change.
The Nobel Peace Prize is in addition to Gore’s Oscar earlier this year for best documentary film. Gore’s documentary on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, won that award earlier this year, becoming what some jokingly refer to as the ‘highest-grossing Power Point presentation in history.’
Gore will share the Nobel Prize with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This group consists of over 2000 of the world’s top climate and meteorology scientists (http://www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm), who study data on climate change gleaned from peer-reviewed scientific journals from all over the world. Much of the data presented in An Inconvenient Truth was provided by studies conducted by the IPCC.
The Nobel Prize committee said about Mr. Gore’s work: "His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."
Mr. Gore is to be congratulated for the impressive work he has done in raising awareness of the dangers of climate change, but I sometimes worry that his personal lifestyle tends to damage the message he is sending. Like Mr. Gore, I agree that if we don’t make some drastic changes in the near future, we could be headed for a global disaster; however, I don’t think that attempting to excuse a lavish, energy-hungry lifestyle by simply buying carbon offsets as Gore does, sends the right sort of message to the public.
Gore is enjoying the public eye right now as one of the foremost environmental spokespersons in the world, and this would be a great opportunity for him to demonstrate how individual citizens can make a real difference for the environment. Unfortunately, his lifestyle doesn’t match his message. For example, public records reveal that Gore and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Virginia. He also has a third home in Carthage, Tennessee. This is hardly congruent with a ‘less is more’ environmental message.
Could you imagine the impact that Mr. Gore would make in the political arena if he sold all his mansions and moved into a 1500-square-foot straw bale home somewhere in the hills of Tennessee, where he could then grow his own food organically while converting wind and sunlight to energy for his power needs?
I agree with Mr. Gore that drastic change needs to be made if we want to avert an ecological disaster in the future. I just think that it damages Gore’s credibility if he is unwilling to make those changes himself, yet asks others to do so.