The Real Reason for Al's Nobel

This is an excellent, thoroughly cynical and warped, dissection of how Al Gore came to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Those awarding said prize are actually members of Norway's Parliament (no, not a committee of experts, as with the others) and it's thus a highly political exercise.

OK, well, politicians will do what is good for politicians, this is the basis of public choice theory. And what would be good for the politicians of a country like Norway? A country that floats on vast reservoirs of oil and gas, all extracted by a State owned company? That would be higher taxation on coal, their fossil fuel rival, would it not?

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

So I congratulate Gore on finding an income alternative to his lead-zinc mining leases, and the Oslo committee, who may deserve the Nobel Prize in Economics for awarding the Peace Prize to Gore.

Their decision wisely reflects the best Viking fiscal tradition, while avoiding the recrimination that  so often attends rapine, pillage,looting and burning. Especially the last--nowadays the Viking's loot might scarcely cover their carbon offsets.

A quite masterly (if not dastardly) plan don't you think? And is there anyone insufficiently cycnical about the motivations of politicians to think that it might not be true?