Why Al Really Won the 'Peace Prize'

Your Lordship (moi) takes great pleasure in providing (below) an illuminating excerpt from Adamant wherein the always delightfully perceptive Russell Seitz peels away the p.r. puffery and reveals the hokum that is the Nobel Peace Prize.

- Lord Lunch, Hamsammich Castle, Worcestershiresauce, England

The method of electing the [Nobel Peace Prize] winner ensures a political outcome. Other Nobel prizes are assigned by committees of experts in the orbit of the Swedish Academy of Science, but the Peace Prize winner is determined by a committee reflecting the current strength of Norwegian political parties. Were Norway's anti-immigrant Progress Party to gain a majority, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize might well be Pat Buchanan.

Will The 2008 Nobel Peace Prize Go To Pat Buchanan ?

The five members of the parliamentary committee to whom Democrat Gore owes his prize include three drawn from the Socialist Left, Labour, and Progressive parties forming Norway's ruling coalition, and one Conservative - a former Minister of Trade. Little wonder Francis Sejersted, past chairman of the committee, admits:

“Awarding a peace prize is, to put it bluntly, a political act.”

And all politics is local. None of the other worthy Peace Prize nominees one might list, from Burmese monks to the embattled opponents of tyranny in Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe, can increase the value of Norway's oil and gas reserves. Giving a prize that amplifies the credibility of the world's foremost advocate of carbon taxes most assuredly can.

Investing $750,000 in Al's power to pontificate on behalf of his carbon trading business could pay Norway and OPEC handsomely. The return could exceed a million to one, since Al's crusade to double coal's cost by taxation should translate into far higher prices for the lower carbon North Sea oil and gas that are the mainstay of the Norwegian economy. Oslo stands to gain hundreds of billions of Euros on its multi-billion barrel reserves, a truly extraordinary return on a one kilogram disc of gold.

So my congratulations to Mr. Gore, and kudos to the Oslo committee, whom I hereby place in nomination for the Nobel Prize in Economics for awarding the Peace Prize to Al.

Their decision is in the best Viking fiscal tradition, but avoids the recrimination that so often attends rapine, pillage, looting and burning. Especially the last -- nowadays, a Viking's loot might not cover his carbon offsets.