I think that giving (half of) the Nobel Prize to Al Gore sends a very clear set of signals:
- the first one, naturally, is that climate change is a vital issue which needs to be tackled; less obviously, it also recognizes that climate change is highly likely to be a threat to peace, as disruptions in crops or natural catastrophes caused by weather events cause poverty, resentment and massive population movements with unpredictable consequences - i.e. geopolitical instability. Climate change can bring war.
- the second, by specifically rewarding Al Gore rather than the IPCC alone, suggests that solutions, beyond a better understanding of the facts, and a wider awareness of the issue, will require political action. It is the senior US politician, with an ability to inspire his compatriots, and potentially to get them to accept policy changes, who is rewarded. Understanding must lead to action..
- the third lesson, and one that kossacks are probably happy to hear, is that the world has not given up on US power and US leadership. That prize is, as explicitly as possible, a call for US leadership and action. Nothing can happen in any attempt to limit carbon emissions without the active participation of the USA, as the biggest emitter, and the place (well, one of the two, with the EU) where laws that will apply to corporations active across the world can be enforced. The problem cannot be tackled without the USA.
- But, just as clearly, it is also a reminder that the kind of power that is expected is the soft kind, not the hard one. What's needed from Washington is engagement with the world, not war, on countries or concepts or otherwise. What's required is collective action, and a real attempt at fairly sharing the burden of a common efforts on all, i.e. including America. The conceit that rules can be imposed on the rest of the world but not apply domestically could not have been flagged more explicitly. The idea that the USA is a sovereign island that couldn't care less about what's going on elsewhere is another obvious target. In that sense, the message I get from this prize is: are you (the US) part of the problem, or part of the solution?
As the signs that the impact of climate change is accelerating and becoming increasingly obvious and deadly, politics everywhere will be dominated by that issue, and the feel-good policies that we are still seeing in most places (if anything) will soon be replaced by emergency action plans. In that context, US participation to collective attempts at really harnessing carbon emissions will likely be determining whether the world goes on a cooperative path or fragments around local issues, with the inevitable conflicts that will entail.
While US participation is still our most likely chance of reaching some form of international cooperation, it is by no means impossible that the rest of the world may decide, in the face of US inaction, to go ahead with global plans to cut carbon and, in that context, treat the US as a rogue nation. That probably hinges on China's willingness to tackle the issue, but the way the country is increasingly choking to death from pollution (generated to provide us with "cheap" goods - i.e. goods with no environmental nor socila standards embedded in them) makes it a possible, if not likely, outcome.
In that sense, the Nobel Prize is a warning to the US: if you want to be a leader, now's the time to drop the histrionics, or risk either the collapse of the globalised world, or letting others take over. Of course, implicit in all these messages is also a very real rebuke to Europeans: your efforts so far are a joke, why do you still need America to get things done?