EDITORIAL: Gore's Green Peace: Nobel Prize Reflects His Planetary Platform: Nobel Prize Reflects His

Oct 13, 10:04 AM

Current Headlines: By The Dallas Morning News

Oct. 13--Al Gore didn't win the presidency in 2000, but by any measure he's had some pretty great consolations. He wrote a best-selling book about the global climate-change crisis, won an Academy Award this year for his environmentalist documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and now has received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to save the planet from environmental catastrophe. Not bad.

True, being named a Nobel laureate will do nothing to change Mr. Gore's image as a stuffed shirt in the eyes of many Americans, who don't believe his climate-change message and consider him to be personally sanctimonious.

But the Nobel Prize, which Mr. Gore shares with a United Nations global warming panel, will undoubtedly bring more attention to the climate change problem, at the very time the menacing metamorphosis accelerates faster than scientists have been predicting. Mr. Gore, whatever his faults, is on top of the right issue at the right time.

In fact, he has long been ahead of his time. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush made fun of Mr. Gore, then running for vice president, for his environmental enthusiasm. Far fewer people are laughing today. Though some will question what Mr. Gore's green activism has to do with peace, Pentagon planners are already anticipating wars over diminishing resources as climate change provokes droughts, famines and massive population migrations.

Gore backers are hoping the Nobel honor will spur him to jump into the 2008 presidential field. That's unlikely and, in any case, would be a bad idea. Mr. Gore now has the moral authority and the planetary platform to transcend mere politics. He correctly noted yesterday that the climate crisis is not primarily a political issue but a spiritual and moral one.

Politics changes things, but politicians are far less powerful than most people think. What changes hearts and minds is a reconsideration of core beliefs, which derive from what one loves, what one hopes and what one fears. He who changes the culture changes the world.

In this sense, poets and philosophers are potentially more powerful than presidents. So are Nobel laureates, if they use their authority wisely. A bitter Al Gore lost the White House seven years ago. But he has the rest of his life to make his loss an even bigger gain, for himself and for the imperiled planet.

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