The Nobel Luareate

Al Gore recently received the Nobel peace prize. Though it may seem dissonant to give a prize for peace to a man whose passion and focus is global climate change, it actually makes perfect sense. Global Climate Change causes wars. It already has, and will cause more in the future.

Parenthetically, global climate change is a better term than global warming because the rise in temperature causes more extreme weather of all types, not hotter all the time all over. The name confuses people.

Back to Gore: this man has been passionately involved with global climate change for decades, almost since it was first detected. Like I believe I heard the Nobel Committee say, he has probably done more than any other single individual to make solving global climate change a priority for the governments and people of the Earth. So his credentials are sound on that point.

But why give the Nobel Peace Prize to him? As we all remember, Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, the UN panel that came to the conclusion that the already measured increase in temperature was due to human activity, shared the prize. What does climate change have to do with peace?

The reason lies in the destruction wrought by climate change. With increasing temperature come disruption of ecosystems and habitats. Old ways of using the land become impossible. The water balance is thrown off kilter, resulting in either floods or scarcity. People start to compete more for resources. Vast numbers of people become environmental refugees, looking for a fertile place to live. This strains other countries. Soon the competition for resources blows up into full scale war.

Some argue this has already begun in Sudan. As I understand it, the fight in simplistic terms is between two sets of tribes, one that farms and one that herds. As the area became drier the farmers started to fence their land, so as not to share their resources with anyone. This left the herders with nowhere to go and without access to their traditional sources of water. Before too long the tensions caused armed conflict which evolved into the bloodshed and genocide we see now. The war is more complicated now of course, but I've heard it said it may not have become a fire-fight without the initial push from global climate change.

For another perspective see this article in the East African. It looks like the author agrees that global climate change can start wars, and so in that sense agrees with the award. However, this author believes the committee lately has strayed from Mr. Nobel's original narrow vision for the prize. He wanted it to be more for people who have directly worked to decrease the size of military forces, according to that author.