Al Gore's Nobel Peace Price has sparked a massive debate in the United States. In addition to the acclaim, conservatives and people who deny man's role in climate change are mounting venomous protests -- showing that, even today, environmental protection is still a hot-button issue in America.
Steve Doocy has a question for his viewers. "What do Al Gore, Yassir Arafat and that crazy Jimmy Carter all have in common?" crows the morning host of the American cable channel Fox News. His co-hosts look at him eagerly, half-emptied coffee cups in reach. Doocy waits a beat before answering his own question with a smug yet nauseated smile. "The Nobel Peace Prize."
Then Doocy produces a chart to illustrate that "this award" is nothing else but an "anti-Bush" trophy -- a deliberate, political affront to United States President George W. Bush. The chart he shows is a list of previous Peace Nobel laureates. Kofi Annan: Bush's nemesis as United Nations Secretary General. Jimmy Carter: left-wing kook. Mohamed ElBaradei: Bush's adversary at the nuclear UN watchdog agency IAEA. Doocy sighs
Take Marlo Lewis, the "global warming expert" of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who likes to write commentaries in defense of the oil industry. Gore is a "scaremonger," Lewis charged on CNN, calling Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," among other things, "exaggerated in many cases," "manipulative," and "misleading." All this talk about climate change only diverted "the public attention, the political will and potentially trillions of dollars" from more important problems, such as AIDS.
All this just goes to show that, in the US, climate change and man's role in it is still a hot-button issue, far from the common sense that it is in Europe
Meanwhile, the pendulum of public opinion has long swung to Gore and the climate warriors. When CNN asked in a poll today if Gore deserved the Nobel Peace Price, 68 percent of the participants said yes. Meanwhile, a recent Stanford University poll found that only 20 percent of those surveyed agreed with Bush's environmental policies
Thanks to Al Gore, polar bears will no longer be drowning, therefore free to continue to kill and maim any humans that come into contact with them, therefore contributing to world peace," wrote blogger Cassy Fiano, calling Gore the "Indiana Jones of the Climate Change Movement." "Fausta's Blog" suggested that Gore next put on a one-man Broadway show so he could add a Tony Award to his Oscar and Emmy. And "Redstate" reminded its readers that Hitler and Stalin once had also been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Seems that not much has changed in these realms since George H.W. Bush lampooned Gore, then a vice presidential candidate, as the "Ozone Man," back in 1992. "This guy is so far out in the environmental extreme we'll be up to our necks in owls and outta work for every American," Bush crooned during the election campaign that year (which he lost). His son George W. Bush sounded just the same before the elections of 2000
"The Country Needs a Good President"
Even today, Bush still wobbles around the climate question all the while acting as Earth's savior with public displays of environmentalism. Two weeks ago he held his own climate conference, as if to rebuke the big UN climate summit in New York City that same week. Experts weren't much impressed by that show. "I would really be hard-pressed to give this administration credit for anything but words," Peter Goldmark, director of the climate and air program for Environmental Defense, said in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Even in areas where they promised change -- such as the 'technological revolution' that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice highlighted again in her speech at the United Nations this week -- the words far exceed the action."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,511328,00.html
