A crusading spirit is always an inspiration, even though the mission may be founded on less than firm premises. It is the crusader Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., better known as Al Gore, formerly vice-president of the United States of America, that the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to this year, together with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The prize has been awarded to them “for 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”. The subject had interested Mr Gore long before it had become such a catchword, and, through books and then an Academy Award-winning film, he became the most politically famous advocate for changes in resource-use in order to reverse, or at least halt, the dangerous degradation of the environment.

Since Mr Gore is not a scientist, it is his advocacy, his eloquent use of powerful propaganda for a cause, that is being rewarded. Unceasing propaganda in a worthy cause can and should be appreciated, although it might be asked whether that alone could merit the Nobel Peace Prize. For, in terms of impact and action, Mr Gore’s crusade slips irretrievably towards political and economic effects. The science surrounding the issue of global warming is far from united in its conclusions; there is a very strong non-lobby group of highly qualified scientists dedicated to causes of change on a global scale who would question the phrase, “man-made climate change”. According to them, human agency is one of the 15 known factors behind climate change, and not the primary one. Climate on the earth changed drastically before human beings arrived, and there are many forces of change that are yet unknown. Mr Gore’s film, according to a high court it was brought to, does expose, in its exaggeratedly alarmist view, the weakness in his science and that of those he leads.

While there is no need to downplay the importance of habits of conservation and resistance to pollution, it is necessary to see what Mr Gore’s crusade entails. Global warming, the feature of climate change on which the earth’s fate depends according to Mr Gore and the IPCC, attracts enormous funds, and has become an issue in the pressures that operate between the North and the South in international trade agreements, for example. Closer home, the attitude of Mr George Bush, who defeated Mr Gore narrowly in the presidential race earlier, to global warming has infuriated environmentalists, and interference by the White House into scientific research on climate change has embarrassed both scientists and bureaucrats. This is not Mr Gore’s fault, of course, but much to his advantage. His crusade looks more gallant. The Nobel Peace Prize has been given for many reasons. A campaign for an apparently scientific understanding of earth’s changes, mixed up with morals and politics, is evidently one of them.