Run, Al Gore, Run! (Run, ICRISAT, Run!)

Al Gore ran for US President and lost; he has been running for Global Prescient for 30 years and just won the Nobel Peace Prize, October 13. When running, act locally, think globally. Now at peace, Al Gore is not running for President and losing again. He has been running a greater race. Run, Al Gore, run!

You are looking at the traffic lights from outer space. Man-made. I ran the original centerfold photo, much of it in blue – from Rice Today, 2007 July-September, International Rice Research Institute, or IRRI, from an article on climate change – through Photoshop. The green has yielded to yellow; next to yellow is red. We’re stuck to the color yellow, the color of global warning because of error, negligence, stupidity. Having run Asia’s rice-based Green Revolution, and now running her biotechnology, IRRI is running global warning too. Run, IRRI, run!

Al Gore says he and his wife Tipper will donate whatever his share of the award to his own advocacy group, the Alliance for Climate Protection. He says (Alan Zarembo & Maggie Farley, latimes.com):

We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.

Al Gore shares the US$1.5M Peace Prize with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) composed of 2,500 scientists from 130 countries. IPCC Chair Rajendra Pauchari says Al Gore is a worthy co-winner.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon says he is happy about the UN award. ‘Thanks to the IPCC’s lucid and well-documented findings,’ he says, ‘it is now established beyond doubt that climate change is happening, and that much of it is caused by human activity’ (latimes.com).

The Economist (economist.com) puts it well on how the co-winners fit together in a common endeavor: ‘The IPCC has put together scientific knowledge on the subject in a form comprehensible to policymakers; Mr Gore has pushed the policymakers to take action.’

ABC Australia summarizes beautifully the basis for the decision of the Nobel Committee in awarding the prize jointly to Al Gore and the IPCC in these words, ‘for their efforts (in laying) the foundations for fighting global warming’ (abc.net.au).

A media release by the Nobel Committee says:

By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.

Al Gore won the award for being ‘probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted’ to mitigate global warming (Eric Pooley, time.com).

‘India celebrates Pauchari’s Nobel win,’ says Nandini Lakshman (businessweek.com). ‘The Peace Prize, shared with Al Gore, gives the UN’s IPCC Chair more leverage in his quest for Indian environmental policy change.’ He is running after members of the Indian Establishment running against policy changes to protect their interests. Pauchari is the Director General of New Delhi’s The Energy & Resources Institute (TERI), known for its outstanding business model that provides technical and policy assistances to government and consulting services to corporations and is self-sustaining, ‘the only one of its kind in India.’ TERI is running after energy wasters and waste producers.

India! You have just pointed me to another award-winning runner, perhaps not in the stature of the US’ Al Gore or your IPCC, but nevertheless is world-class in many ways. India, you are home to Team ICRISAT, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), the only one of its kind in the world, winner of several international awards too as I have written, including being rated ‘Outstanding’ by the World Bank among 15 centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) (americanchronicle.com). India is its home base; like Al Gore’s the world is its running ground. To paraphrase Al Gore’s quote of an African proverb: ‘If you want to run quickly, run alone. If you want to run far, run together.’

We run. Team Spirit, Team ICRISAT. The Captain and his Team have been running against the poverty of agricultural policies, sectors and systems in Africa, Asia, Australia, Latin America in relation to disadvantaged cultivators growing pigeonpea, chickpea, peanut and sweet sorghum, 4 crops they are mandated to breed better for poor farmers in poor soils: dry, waterlogged, infertile, or too costly to irrigate.

What has the Captain of Team ICRISAT, William Dar, been doing in the global run of ideas and information on the issues of poverty of lands and people and the danger of global warming for me to call him the ‘Al Gore of Science’ (americanchronicle.com) and ‘Discovery Manager’ (globalnation.inquirer.net). Dar is the one who has been running Team ICRISAT into projects that directly impact needy peoples in the semi-arid tropics. For instance, in each of their mandate countries, they have been trying to convince the private sector to partner with scientists and government in running a biofuel industry with small farmers as active partners and direct beneficiaries. Proof of concept is the Rusni Distillery in Andhra Pradesh, India, now producing ethanol from sweet sorghum in commercial scale. Similar proposals have started running in the Philippines. Run, ICRISAT, run!

Charles Clover (telegraph.co.uk) says: ‘I’m not sure we (can) expect politicians to get the details right. It’s the big picture that matters and Al Gore has got that just about right.’ I say Team ICRISAT’s got it right too. Nobel Committee Chairman Ole Danbolt Mjos says, ‘The important thing is the message that the world is threatened by global warming.’ The important thing is that even small farmers with sweet sorghum and disadvantaged soils can run into climate change now and can SAVE THEIR POOR FAMILIES, SAVE POOR US, HELPING US RUN THE WORLD’S GREATEST RACE. NOW.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 6:23 pm and is filed under creative thinking, creative writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.