EclectEcon

The joint-award of the Nobel Prize for Peace to US failed-Presidential candidate, Al Gore, is a dangerous disgrace, although one entirely to have been expected. ... ‘global warming’ is now the PC “clamour of the times”, especially in Old Europe - and Norway is Very Old Europe. The temptation to give George W a kicking just can’t be resisted. Moreover, this new secular religion of the liberal elites must have its saints to carry the Green Flag, however questionable their qualifications. The names of recent Nobel Peace laureates read like a list of bien pensant characters from the political left: Jimmy Carter (surely one of the worst of US Presidents) (2002); Yassir Arafat (1994); and Rigoberta Menchu (1992). Al Gore joins a highly predictable bunch. ...

In Europe especially, ‘global warming’ is the chosen trope of the political classes. It is a powerful Barthesian myth, and its aim is to exclude all other constructions of knowledge from debate. Al Gore’s ‘elevation’ is simply part of this process of exclusion, namely the trampling down of any dissent by an increasingly assertive, self-referential, grand narrative in the style of Marxism. This must not be allowed to happen. [emphasis in the original]