Al Gore, you go ahead! We all are behind you
Monday, 29 October 2007
Maswood Alam Khan
PEACE has traditionally been viewed as absence of war and health absence of disease. Millions of people have died and megatons of money have been spent in fights against wars and diseases to convey peace and tranquility. Those fights ultimately fatigued the combatants to a point when they started staying away from hostilities after learning an expensive lesson that 'an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure'. So, small pox has been made preventable and next World War not so visible in the offing.
An inexpensive vaccine immunizes a human body against the deadly scourge of small pox; but the vaccine against the scourge of war does not come so cheap. Deterrence deemed a measure of prevention is impelling countries to pile up weapons as a ploy to bristle their hairs and flex their muscles with rages of threats, if not to wage wars. With hostile traits indented deep in our genetic makeup, tribal conflicts and civil wars in countries like Sudan and Congo have become rampant though offensive wars among states may have become less common out of war fatigue. As usual, countries are spending money to buy weapons to wage or prevent war and people are dying from hunger as they do not have money to buy foodstuff.
Say, there is no war, no violence, no civil strife, no conflicts---and tranquility is prevailing in a country with no voice of protest heard. Is that country in peace? NO, if peace is foisted upon citizenry under duress as is now felt in Myanmar where human voices have been muffled by guns trained on their heads resulting in a deafening silence that is now haunting the country. Myanmar people know well they will not get justice if they wag their fingers against the gun-toting governors of the military regime.
Living in peace in an eerie silence without justice is like dying a slow death without groans inside airtight compartments being gradually loaded with poisonous gases---whimpers of the dying not audible from outside.
Peace is totally absent from homes of people who are socially dominated, politically oppressed, or economically exploited with uproars or protests not so much heard in the press or on the street. Such silent invasion to rob homes of peace is what Juhan Galtung, a Norwegian professor, termed as 'structural violence' denoting a form of brutality which corresponds with the systematic ways in which a given social structure or social institution kills people slowly by preventing them from meeting their basic needs. Vaccinating a child against small pox, polio, typhoid, tuberculosis and hepatitis may cost our government quite a substantial amount of money; but not doing so is tantamount to infanticide of millions of lives. Such killing is a classic example of structural violence.
Peace in the absence of war, violence, injustice or ruthlessness of a despot may also not be peace in the intrinsic sense of the terminology if a citizen living in a crimeless society under the best democracy with the finest healthcare facilities is not hopeful that his/her progeny would likewise live in peace and tranquility in future.
Peace as a singular noun is a misnomer. Peace should be thought in the sense of "many peaces" as a noun with a plural. Nobody under the sun can ever claim that s/he has attained peace at the end of the day or at the end of his/her life because there are many peaces available and not all peaces can be attainable by one however healthy or wealthy s/he might be. The best piece of peace one can derive is from nature if one knows how to remain content with whatever s/he has been blessed by the nature. And the best way of living a peaceful life is not to ruminate over the past pains and not to brood over the possibility of future pains. Living TODAY is the wisest way to live a happy life provided we know beforehand that at least the roads ahead are not bumpy even if there is possibility of dying from a road accident.
But, alas! We are busy more on burning our bridges than on smoothing our highways so that our posterity cannot hope to reach their destinations after our safe passages. Living TODAY with peace in mind is impossible when all the scientists in unison are warning that neither birds will sing nor trees will dance in a climate that is going to be too scorching for any life to live on this planet. Here comes Al Gore looking aghast at the sight of destructing frenzy people the world over are competing in their wars against our Mother Nature to turn this earth into an arid planet!
We cannot imagine a more urgent time of planetary emergency than now when Nobel Prize for peace could go to Al Gore---a person who is better known as the Tree Man of the world than the former Vice President of the USA. American people made plans to make Al Gore their President in November general election of the year 2000; Al Gore was almost elected as the first US President of the current century by bagging around 300,000 more votes nationally than his opponent George W. Bush.
But, "There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will", said Shakespeare paraphrasing a Latin axiom "Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit" (Man proposes, but God disposes). However strongly American people proposed for Gore to be elected by popular votes God instead disposed Bush, with the help of Florida, get the needed state-based 270 electoral votes to win the White House, though a legal controversy over the Florida election recount, as settled by the US Supreme Court favoring Bush, made the election one of the most controversial in American history. God in fact conspired with a different scheme not to place Gore into the pigeonhole of the White House, which can be managed by a diminutive figure like a Bush or a Hillary. Daring to mobilize the world population to wage a war against the destructors of the planet Earth is a job that demands a personality who must be much stouter and taller than Reagan, Bush, Hillary or Carter.
Millions of Americans and people of the world who cried like babies at Al Gore's defeat by the narrowest imaginable margin to Bush in the US November 2000 general election flashed their tear-soaked smiles when, on 23 January 2007, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis and actress Salma Hayek in the 79th Academy Awards ceremony pronounced the name of Al Gore as the Oscar winner for his starring in the documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" discussing environmental threats from global warming.
The Academy award bolstered Al Gore to explore further avenues and devise popular ways to draw global attention to how people, who are too busy to think what awaits them tomorrow in the chase for earning their fortunes, are unknowingly chopping their own legs. Last July, his organization "Save Our Selves" spearheaded a benefit concert named "Live Earth" with some of the world's most famous pop stars, including Madonna and Police, to urge fans and governments to fight global warming.
Tear-soaked smiles of millions of Al-Gorian devotees turned into thunderous rumbles of screams out of ecstasy when, on 12 October 2007, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Professor Ole Danbolt Mjos announced the name 'Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.' as a co-recipient to share this year's Nobel Peace Prize with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Al-Gorian devotees cried once again---this time out of victory---when Nobel Committee in their citation eulogized Al Gore and IPCC "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."
In late 1970s when even climatologists did not scream their battle cries in perfect pitch to warn against a grim future due to greenhouse effects Gore was one of the first few politicians in the world who did grasp the seriousness of climate change and held the first US congressional hearings on the subject and earnestly called for reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. That he was perhaps the only American Senator who in spite of his busy schedules snatched at some moments to gape at the stars in the sky became obvious when subscribers to Washington Post read an editorial where the author Senator Al Gore argued that, "Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand new relationship with the planet Earth. The world's forests are being destroyed; an enormous hole is opening in the ozone layer. Living species are dying at an unprecedented rate."
In the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Treaty, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but was vehemently opposed by the Senate. Of late, Gore has remained busy trotting the globe speaking and participating in events mainly aimed towards global warming awareness and prevention. In 2004, he launched Generation Investment Management. This firm, which he chairs, seeks out companies which take a responsible view on global issues such as climate change. Gore is a vocal proponent of carbon neutrality, buying a carbon offset each time he travels by aircraft. Gore and his family drive hybrid vehicles. The Gore Family has done much to offset their carbon footprint and electrical usage, such as through the installation of solar panels.
Our planet Earth will get along fine without us; she does not need our helping hands in her planetary journeys. But our life would be in peril if we do not nurse the garden she has offered us to live in. Stratospheric ozone depletion threatens us with enhanced ultraviolet radiation at the earth's surface, which can be damaging or lethal to many life forms. Air pollution near ground level and acid precipitation are already causing widespread injury to humans, forests, and crops. Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources.
Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about. Prodigies, including a majority of the living Nobel Laureates in the sciences, have already prophesized that the entire Human Species is in danger of extinction, along with most other life on Earth due to overexploitation of natural resources mostly by humans.
We do not need to panic or despair. God willing, it is not too late. We humans are extraordinarily resilient and have the natural wisdom to survive.
If enough of us recognize the problems in time, act responsibly, and have a leader like Al Gore, we can take positive action, and turn the negation around. We should remember that we are not Masters of Nature, we are a part of Nature and she is our Mother.
Miss Samantha Rogers, the global warming campaigner of Greenpeace, in her recent letter mass circulated through internet appealed nature lovers of the world to choose the next Saturday (03 November 2007), the day exactly one year before the 2008 US general election, to raise a strong chorus of their voices in the fight against global warming with a view to sending a clear message to presidential candidates of the USA that it is time for our leaders to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, increase fuel economy standards, and make big investments in renewable energy.
Al-Gorian devotees who shed oceans of tears for the last seven years to see their maharishi inside the White House seem to have been brokenhearted as Al Gore in an interview with Norway's NRK TV said last week, "I don't have plans to be a candidate again so I don't really see it in that context at all" in response to a question about how the Nobel Prize would affect his political career---though a chance for his making a bid for the Democratic nomination for the 2008 presidential election at the last minute is not yet over.
Al Gore vehemently opposed the Vietnam War. But he was drafted (compulsorily enlisted to serve US Army) in 1969 and was shipped to Vietnam in 1971. In a similar vein millions of tear-shedding Al-Gorian devotees all over the world are conspiring to draft their guru to accept the Democratic nomination and run for 2008 American presidency. The devotees loathe the idea of Gore's staring at the stars with a philosophical look; they want Gore to handle the American Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles by his own hands to train the noses of the missiles on those who would dare to take a stand against our Mother Nature.
An organization called www.draftgore.com said that 200,000 people had signed a petition to urge Gore to run, with a jump of 70,000 signatures in four days after the Nobel Peace Prize was declared. If a campaign in response to 'Greenpeace's appeal to alert or cajole the probable American presidents about the ominous climate change' can be organized on November 03 in Bangladesh, I am sure, not less than a million people would queue up to put their signatures in similar petitions requesting Gore to run the US presidential election because we Bangladeshis know that Al Gore has been crying for the last few decades not so much for his own country as for countries like Bangladesh which will be submerged under water melted from glaciers due to unwelcome warmth of the climate. Thousands of people of Bangladesh would then---if especially allowed under present emergency rule---march in processions in metropolitan towns and chant a slogan at the top of their lungs: "Al Gore, tumi egiye cholo, aamraa asi tomaar shathey." (Al Gore, you go ahead! We all are behind you).
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank, who may be reached over e-mail: [email protected]
PEACE has traditionally been viewed as absence of war and health absence of disease. Millions of people have died and megatons of money have been spent in fights against wars and diseases to convey peace and tranquility. Those fights ultimately fatigued the combatants to a point when they started staying away from hostilities after learning an expensive lesson that 'an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure'. So, small pox has been made preventable and next World War not so visible in the offing.
An inexpensive vaccine immunizes a human body against the deadly scourge of small pox; but the vaccine against the scourge of war does not come so cheap. Deterrence deemed a measure of prevention is impelling countries to pile up weapons as a ploy to bristle their hairs and flex their muscles with rages of threats, if not to wage wars. With hostile traits indented deep in our genetic makeup, tribal conflicts and civil wars in countries like Sudan and Congo have become rampant though offensive wars among states may have become less common out of war fatigue. As usual, countries are spending money to buy weapons to wage or prevent war and people are dying from hunger as they do not have money to buy foodstuff.
Say, there is no war, no violence, no civil strife, no conflicts---and tranquility is prevailing in a country with no voice of protest heard. Is that country in peace? NO, if peace is foisted upon citizenry under duress as is now felt in Myanmar where human voices have been muffled by guns trained on their heads resulting in a deafening silence that is now haunting the country. Myanmar people know well they will not get justice if they wag their fingers against the gun-toting governors of the military regime.
Living in peace in an eerie silence without justice is like dying a slow death without groans inside airtight compartments being gradually loaded with poisonous gases---whimpers of the dying not audible from outside.
Peace is totally absent from homes of people who are socially dominated, politically oppressed, or economically exploited with uproars or protests not so much heard in the press or on the street. Such silent invasion to rob homes of peace is what Juhan Galtung, a Norwegian professor, termed as 'structural violence' denoting a form of brutality which corresponds with the systematic ways in which a given social structure or social institution kills people slowly by preventing them from meeting their basic needs. Vaccinating a child against small pox, polio, typhoid, tuberculosis and hepatitis may cost our government quite a substantial amount of money; but not doing so is tantamount to infanticide of millions of lives. Such killing is a classic example of structural violence.
Peace in the absence of war, violence, injustice or ruthlessness of a despot may also not be peace in the intrinsic sense of the terminology if a citizen living in a crimeless society under the best democracy with the finest healthcare facilities is not hopeful that his/her progeny would likewise live in peace and tranquility in future.
Peace as a singular noun is a misnomer. Peace should be thought in the sense of "many peaces" as a noun with a plural. Nobody under the sun can ever claim that s/he has attained peace at the end of the day or at the end of his/her life because there are many peaces available and not all peaces can be attainable by one however healthy or wealthy s/he might be. The best piece of peace one can derive is from nature if one knows how to remain content with whatever s/he has been blessed by the nature. And the best way of living a peaceful life is not to ruminate over the past pains and not to brood over the possibility of future pains. Living TODAY is the wisest way to live a happy life provided we know beforehand that at least the roads ahead are not bumpy even if there is possibility of dying from a road accident.
But, alas! We are busy more on burning our bridges than on smoothing our highways so that our posterity cannot hope to reach their destinations after our safe passages. Living TODAY with peace in mind is impossible when all the scientists in unison are warning that neither birds will sing nor trees will dance in a climate that is going to be too scorching for any life to live on this planet. Here comes Al Gore looking aghast at the sight of destructing frenzy people the world over are competing in their wars against our Mother Nature to turn this earth into an arid planet!
We cannot imagine a more urgent time of planetary emergency than now when Nobel Prize for peace could go to Al Gore---a person who is better known as the Tree Man of the world than the former Vice President of the USA. American people made plans to make Al Gore their President in November general election of the year 2000; Al Gore was almost elected as the first US President of the current century by bagging around 300,000 more votes nationally than his opponent George W. Bush.
But, "There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will", said Shakespeare paraphrasing a Latin axiom "Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit" (Man proposes, but God disposes). However strongly American people proposed for Gore to be elected by popular votes God instead disposed Bush, with the help of Florida, get the needed state-based 270 electoral votes to win the White House, though a legal controversy over the Florida election recount, as settled by the US Supreme Court favoring Bush, made the election one of the most controversial in American history. God in fact conspired with a different scheme not to place Gore into the pigeonhole of the White House, which can be managed by a diminutive figure like a Bush or a Hillary. Daring to mobilize the world population to wage a war against the destructors of the planet Earth is a job that demands a personality who must be much stouter and taller than Reagan, Bush, Hillary or Carter.
Millions of Americans and people of the world who cried like babies at Al Gore's defeat by the narrowest imaginable margin to Bush in the US November 2000 general election flashed their tear-soaked smiles when, on 23 January 2007, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis and actress Salma Hayek in the 79th Academy Awards ceremony pronounced the name of Al Gore as the Oscar winner for his starring in the documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" discussing environmental threats from global warming.
The Academy award bolstered Al Gore to explore further avenues and devise popular ways to draw global attention to how people, who are too busy to think what awaits them tomorrow in the chase for earning their fortunes, are unknowingly chopping their own legs. Last July, his organization "Save Our Selves" spearheaded a benefit concert named "Live Earth" with some of the world's most famous pop stars, including Madonna and Police, to urge fans and governments to fight global warming.
Tear-soaked smiles of millions of Al-Gorian devotees turned into thunderous rumbles of screams out of ecstasy when, on 12 October 2007, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Professor Ole Danbolt Mjos announced the name 'Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.' as a co-recipient to share this year's Nobel Peace Prize with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Al-Gorian devotees cried once again---this time out of victory---when Nobel Committee in their citation eulogized Al Gore and IPCC "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."
In late 1970s when even climatologists did not scream their battle cries in perfect pitch to warn against a grim future due to greenhouse effects Gore was one of the first few politicians in the world who did grasp the seriousness of climate change and held the first US congressional hearings on the subject and earnestly called for reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. That he was perhaps the only American Senator who in spite of his busy schedules snatched at some moments to gape at the stars in the sky became obvious when subscribers to Washington Post read an editorial where the author Senator Al Gore argued that, "Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand new relationship with the planet Earth. The world's forests are being destroyed; an enormous hole is opening in the ozone layer. Living species are dying at an unprecedented rate."
In the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Treaty, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but was vehemently opposed by the Senate. Of late, Gore has remained busy trotting the globe speaking and participating in events mainly aimed towards global warming awareness and prevention. In 2004, he launched Generation Investment Management. This firm, which he chairs, seeks out companies which take a responsible view on global issues such as climate change. Gore is a vocal proponent of carbon neutrality, buying a carbon offset each time he travels by aircraft. Gore and his family drive hybrid vehicles. The Gore Family has done much to offset their carbon footprint and electrical usage, such as through the installation of solar panels.
Our planet Earth will get along fine without us; she does not need our helping hands in her planetary journeys. But our life would be in peril if we do not nurse the garden she has offered us to live in. Stratospheric ozone depletion threatens us with enhanced ultraviolet radiation at the earth's surface, which can be damaging or lethal to many life forms. Air pollution near ground level and acid precipitation are already causing widespread injury to humans, forests, and crops. Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources.
Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about. Prodigies, including a majority of the living Nobel Laureates in the sciences, have already prophesized that the entire Human Species is in danger of extinction, along with most other life on Earth due to overexploitation of natural resources mostly by humans.
We do not need to panic or despair. God willing, it is not too late. We humans are extraordinarily resilient and have the natural wisdom to survive.
If enough of us recognize the problems in time, act responsibly, and have a leader like Al Gore, we can take positive action, and turn the negation around. We should remember that we are not Masters of Nature, we are a part of Nature and she is our Mother.
Miss Samantha Rogers, the global warming campaigner of Greenpeace, in her recent letter mass circulated through internet appealed nature lovers of the world to choose the next Saturday (03 November 2007), the day exactly one year before the 2008 US general election, to raise a strong chorus of their voices in the fight against global warming with a view to sending a clear message to presidential candidates of the USA that it is time for our leaders to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, increase fuel economy standards, and make big investments in renewable energy.
Al-Gorian devotees who shed oceans of tears for the last seven years to see their maharishi inside the White House seem to have been brokenhearted as Al Gore in an interview with Norway's NRK TV said last week, "I don't have plans to be a candidate again so I don't really see it in that context at all" in response to a question about how the Nobel Prize would affect his political career---though a chance for his making a bid for the Democratic nomination for the 2008 presidential election at the last minute is not yet over.
Al Gore vehemently opposed the Vietnam War. But he was drafted (compulsorily enlisted to serve US Army) in 1969 and was shipped to Vietnam in 1971. In a similar vein millions of tear-shedding Al-Gorian devotees all over the world are conspiring to draft their guru to accept the Democratic nomination and run for 2008 American presidency. The devotees loathe the idea of Gore's staring at the stars with a philosophical look; they want Gore to handle the American Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles by his own hands to train the noses of the missiles on those who would dare to take a stand against our Mother Nature.
An organization called www.draftgore.com said that 200,000 people had signed a petition to urge Gore to run, with a jump of 70,000 signatures in four days after the Nobel Peace Prize was declared. If a campaign in response to 'Greenpeace's appeal to alert or cajole the probable American presidents about the ominous climate change' can be organized on November 03 in Bangladesh, I am sure, not less than a million people would queue up to put their signatures in similar petitions requesting Gore to run the US presidential election because we Bangladeshis know that Al Gore has been crying for the last few decades not so much for his own country as for countries like Bangladesh which will be submerged under water melted from glaciers due to unwelcome warmth of the climate. Thousands of people of Bangladesh would then---if especially allowed under present emergency rule---march in processions in metropolitan towns and chant a slogan at the top of their lungs: "Al Gore, tumi egiye cholo, aamraa asi tomaar shathey." (Al Gore, you go ahead! We all are behind you).
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank, who may be reached over e-mail: [email protected]