Great news for the planet: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore have won the Nobel Peace Prize for, in the words of the Nobel Committee, " their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." Go to the Nobel Committee for their announcement and related information or to any of the nearly 2,000 news items available on line at this point. Try this from the AP or this really superb article from the BBC.
The movement to contain the worst effects of global warming and to reverse the trend toward catastrophic climate change is continuing to gain force. We might even yet make our home, this fragile planet Earth, better by finally learning the lessons of sustainability. (That's what it is, folks: our home. It's even, yes, Gaia, our mother.)
I've written about the IPCC and its critical work this year, for example at "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" and "Mitigation of Climate Change". I've also written about Al Gore at Al Gore, among other places. I've noted that there's been a palpable backlash against Gore , of course , and that people have liked to denigrate concern for climate change at the same time that they were running down Gore. So I simply wanted to further note that there's a whole world of worthy folks who are saying much of what the former Vice President has said, if not so eloquently and passionately: If You Don't Like Al Gore, Then
Last thought here: You might think that the Peace Prize and saving ourselves from catastrophic climate change are not a natural fit. Well they are. In fact, Making Peace with the Planet, as the great Barry Commoner titled one of his books, may be the ultimate expression of creating and building peace.
