Lorne Gunter: National Post
When I read Wednesday that the Nobel Women's Initiative had managed to round up eight winners of the Peace Prize to condemn attempts by a Canadian company to build a pipeline from Alberta's oil sands to refineries on the Gulf coast in Texas, my first thought was, "I hope for their sake they haven't resurrected Rigoberta Menchu."
But they had.
Menchu is a Mayan who was active in the resistance by her people against the violence and repression they suffered at the hands of Guatemala's junta in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. She won the 1992 Nobel Peace prize for her 1983 memoir I, Rigoberta Menchu, a harrowing expose of the brutality apparently inflicted upon her and her family by Guatemalan death squads. Menchu allegedly dictated the book to a journalist because she had been denied schooling and was illiterate.
Except that rather than being a poor peasant, Menchu actually came from a fairly well-to-do family and instead of being illiterate, had attended a fairly expensive elementary school and junior high. Much of the rest of her story was made up, too.
When the long list of erroneous claims came to light, Menchu's response was to dismiss her critics as racists and insist they were motivated to undermine efforts by indigenous people around the world to defend their human rights.
But even if Menchu's Nobel had been awarded for bona fide reasons, what does a Central American resistance fighter know about Canada's oil sands or the ecological merits of a pipeline?
The eight laureates signing Wednesday's letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper include no scientists, even though they make such quasiscientific claims as "further exploitation of the tar sands will dramatically increase the amount of greenhouse gas emissions being produced in North America."
Really? Man-made carbon emissions account for somewhere around 5% of total annual carbon emissions. The rest (95%) come mostly from the oceans and decaying plants. Just 2% of man-made emissions come from Canada and just 5% of that 2% comes from oil sands. In other words, just .1% of man-made emissions worldwide come from the oil sands - and total man-made emissions are a tiny fraction of the total! The oil sands' total emissions globally? Zero point zero zero five per cent. Even a doubling of that amount would hardly be "dramatic."
In addition to the storyteller Menchu, the signatories include an Argentine sculptor, architect and self-described pacifist, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who did great work on behalf of victims of Argentina's "Dirty War," but who has no special expertise on pipelines and the environment.
There is also Desmond Tutu, the South African clergyman and anti-apartheid activist, Jose Ramos-Horta, the president of East Timor who won a Nobel for speaking out against Indonesia's oppression of his country, Jody Williams, an anti-land mines activist, Shirin Ebadi, a Iranian lawyer and brave critic of her country's fanatical Muslim oligarchy and Mairead Maguire and Betty Williams, a pair of Irish peace activists who helped end the Troubles in their homeland. (Maguire has since become active in the Palestinian resistance against Israel and was on board a ship in the Gaza flotilla that sought to break the Israeli blockade last June.)
None of this disqualifies any of the signatories from having an opinion about the Keystone XL pipeline. Still, it is curious that whenever physicists or mathematicians or geologists who are not climatologists have dissenting opinions about global warming and climate change, we are instructed by the climate-science community to disregard their opinions because they are not experts. Yet when non-climatologists who agree with the current dogma on climate change - like David Suzuki the geneticist or Al Gore the career politician or Jody Williams, the English-as-a-second-language teacher - governments are to bow down before their wisdom and turn over the formation of public policy to environmentalists.
lgunter@shaw.ca
But they had.
Menchu is a Mayan who was active in the resistance by her people against the violence and repression they suffered at the hands of Guatemala's junta in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. She won the 1992 Nobel Peace prize for her 1983 memoir I, Rigoberta Menchu, a harrowing expose of the brutality apparently inflicted upon her and her family by Guatemalan death squads. Menchu allegedly dictated the book to a journalist because she had been denied schooling and was illiterate.
Except that rather than being a poor peasant, Menchu actually came from a fairly well-to-do family and instead of being illiterate, had attended a fairly expensive elementary school and junior high. Much of the rest of her story was made up, too.
When the long list of erroneous claims came to light, Menchu's response was to dismiss her critics as racists and insist they were motivated to undermine efforts by indigenous people around the world to defend their human rights.
But even if Menchu's Nobel had been awarded for bona fide reasons, what does a Central American resistance fighter know about Canada's oil sands or the ecological merits of a pipeline?
The eight laureates signing Wednesday's letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper include no scientists, even though they make such quasiscientific claims as "further exploitation of the tar sands will dramatically increase the amount of greenhouse gas emissions being produced in North America."
Really? Man-made carbon emissions account for somewhere around 5% of total annual carbon emissions. The rest (95%) come mostly from the oceans and decaying plants. Just 2% of man-made emissions come from Canada and just 5% of that 2% comes from oil sands. In other words, just .1% of man-made emissions worldwide come from the oil sands - and total man-made emissions are a tiny fraction of the total! The oil sands' total emissions globally? Zero point zero zero five per cent. Even a doubling of that amount would hardly be "dramatic."
In addition to the storyteller Menchu, the signatories include an Argentine sculptor, architect and self-described pacifist, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who did great work on behalf of victims of Argentina's "Dirty War," but who has no special expertise on pipelines and the environment.
There is also Desmond Tutu, the South African clergyman and anti-apartheid activist, Jose Ramos-Horta, the president of East Timor who won a Nobel for speaking out against Indonesia's oppression of his country, Jody Williams, an anti-land mines activist, Shirin Ebadi, a Iranian lawyer and brave critic of her country's fanatical Muslim oligarchy and Mairead Maguire and Betty Williams, a pair of Irish peace activists who helped end the Troubles in their homeland. (Maguire has since become active in the Palestinian resistance against Israel and was on board a ship in the Gaza flotilla that sought to break the Israeli blockade last June.)
None of this disqualifies any of the signatories from having an opinion about the Keystone XL pipeline. Still, it is curious that whenever physicists or mathematicians or geologists who are not climatologists have dissenting opinions about global warming and climate change, we are instructed by the climate-science community to disregard their opinions because they are not experts. Yet when non-climatologists who agree with the current dogma on climate change - like David Suzuki the geneticist or Al Gore the career politician or Jody Williams, the English-as-a-second-language teacher - governments are to bow down before their wisdom and turn over the formation of public policy to environmentalists.
lgunter@shaw.ca
1 comment:
Getting the opinion of Nobel peace prize winners is ironic since they all are declaring war on oil.
They aren't going to call for cool heads, oh no. It's attack! attack! attack!
It's the take no prisoners attitude from such promoters of peace that lets us realise they are serious, and any opposing their will must be slain.
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