Nobel Peace Prize

Norway’s most prominent international moment is perhaps the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize. It makes headlines all over the world each year. I remember particular excitement surrounding the prize in 2004 when it was awarded to Wangari Maathai for her work in Kenya with the Greenbelt Movement. It was the first time that the Peace Prize had been linked to an environmental movement, and it stirred great controversy. Many claimed such awards would water down the Peace Prize, and that a distinction should be maintained between a prize focused on peace and one focused on the environment. But there were many others, myself included, who believed the choice was of revolutionary importance. If shortages of and dramatic changes in the stuff upon which our survival is based - of land, food, water and clean air - are not at the root of conflict, then what is?

Being in Norway with the Fulbright program, I was lucky to get a ticket to this year’s Peace Prize ceremony on December 10th, 2007. It was a fortuitous year to be here, as this year’s prize also elicited a similar debate. The Prize was shared between the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore for their work on global climate change issues. There have been many this Fall, as in the case of the 2004 selection, who have decried the Nobel Committee’s choice to single out an environmental issue for the Peace Prize. The introductory speech of Ole Danbolt Mjøs, the Chair of the Nobel Committee, responded to these criticisms and described the relationship between environment and peace, addressing the committee’s reasons for selecting global climate change as the peace issue of the day.

The ceremony contained the appropriate pomp and circumstance, with the King and other royalty in attendance at Oslo’s Town Hall. There were musical performances, including Pakistani pop-rock and Italian opera sung by famous Norwegian and Latvian opera singers. R.K. Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, accepted the prize on behalf of the organization. He spoke about the IPCC’s truly multi-national efforts to quantify the current global impacts of climate chance and predicted future impacts, providing essential background for policymaking.

Al Gore echoed many of his rallying cries from his movie and many speeches, among other things calling upon world leaders to meet early next year to review decisions that are made at the Bali Climate talks this week, and to meet with regularity until a treaty is achieved. He reminding us that “political will a renewable resource,” and called for a people’s movement. It is a great speech. Here is an excerpt:

"As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, 'Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.' Either, he notes, 'would suffice.' But neither need be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet. We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge."

You can find the text of all of the above speeches at: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/

As I left Town Hall, I heard some elegantly clad Norwegian ladies joking uncomfortably about the airplane flights they would be taking on their way home, and I headed off to find my own carbon emitting mode of transportation back to Bergen. I know many of us are asking ourselves the same questions about how we can continue to live what we feel to be full, rich lives while putting the necessary changes into practice on the individual level and pushing for institutional change. I know one person (my father, Kurt Hoelting) who is about to start an exploratory ‘local year’ without leaving his home region, and without using a car, as an attempt to think deeper into this great dilemma we all share. His blog is http://insidepassages.blogspot.com/, and you can read more background about the project at: http://www.resurgence.org/2007/hoetling244.htm