The Nobel Peace Prize

This year's Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Mr. Al Gore, the former Vice President of USA, and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for their efforts to raise global warming awareness.

First things first, let me congratulate the IPCC and Mr. Gore. The IPCC, headed by the Indian climatologist Dr. R.K. Pachauri, has been responsible for an enormous amount of research over the past two decades. Mr. Gore, on the other hand, has been a media-savvy spokesman who took the message of global warming to the lay public. His movie, An Inconvenient Truth, won an Academy Award this year, and catapulted global warming into daily conversations.

The UN must be commended for creating the IPCC, which churns out top quality research. But, this research has yet to spur effective action. Three major polluters, USA, India and China, have not signed the Kyoto protocol. The countries that did sign the protocol are no where close to achieving their carbon emission targets. So, in terms of actually addressing the problem of global warming, the UN has been as ineffective as ever. In the recent years, there has been a pattern of UN organizations winning Nobel prizes. But their practical impacts have been minimal. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. But again, the IAEA has been far from effective in making Iran open up its nuclear facilities to UN inspectors.

Mr. Gore is genuinely concerned about global warming. But in trying to get his message across, he has resorted to the age-old Hollywood tactic of over-dramatizing issues. A British Study showed that Mr. Gore committed some major errors in his Academy Award winning movie. Mr. Gore runs the risk of being viewed as a false alarmist if he is not balanced and objective in expressing his opinions.

Let's wait and see what effect, if any, the Nobel Prize has on worldwide efforts to reduce carbon emissions. I have already started putting in my fair share of power savings!