By making a Chinese government official one of the awardees this seems as political/aspirational as President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, announced when he had been in office for eight months.
From Asia Times, February 23:
Xie Zhenhua, Collin O’Mara and Bruno Wu awarded for their green leadership and vision
The Nobel Sustainability Trust (NST) has honored Xie Zhenhua, Special Envoy for Climate Change at China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Collin O’Mara, CEO of American conservation organization National Wildlife Federation and Chinese-American entrepreneur and Asia Times’ shareholder Dr Bruno Wu for their outstanding contributions to sustainability.
NST, a Swiss-based foundation founded in 2007 by members of the Nobel family, works independently of the Nobel Foundation which manages the traditional Nobel Prize awards. The Sustainability Awards recognize leadership by a deliberate approach to accelerating the global adoption of sustainability and sustainable solutions.
This year’s awards were bestowed at a February 22 ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden....
....MUCH MORE
Speaking of politicized Peace Prizes, beyond even the awarding two old terrorists, Menachem Begin (jointly with Anwar Sadat) and Yasser Arafat (jointly with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres) the 2007 prize to Al Gore (jointly to the IPCC as an organization, though Michael Mann and others used to claim they were Nobel Prize winners), that 2007 prize to Gore was a travesty and for many diminished the importance of the Peace Prize to the level of Gore's Oscar and Grammy awards.
Among the Nominees that Gore beat, in addition to the Buddhist monks protesting the military government of Myanmar, was this woman:
Irena Sendler.
She saved 2500 Jewish kids, sneaking them out of the Warsaw ghetto in 1's and 2's, sometimes more if she could. When the Gestapo caught her they tortured her to get the names of anyone she was working with. She resisted, they broke her legs, arms and feet, she kept the names of the 2500 kids in a jar, written in code and buried so they could be reunited with their families.
Of course they weren't reunited, their families went up the smokestacks of Treblinka and Auschwitz but she kept the secrets.
We have a dozen or so posts on Madame Sendlerowa, here's one of them:
In Memoriam: Irena SendlerMadame Sendlerowa died May 12, 2008 in Warsaw, Poland.
She was a tough broad.
We noted her passing twelve years ago:
Irena Sendler, Nobel Peace Prize Candidate, Has Died
after tracking her nomination for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
The betting markets had her as second choice behind Al Gore. There were
also some Burmese Buddhist monks and a couple dozen other nominees.
Mr. Gore of course won. Well he and the UN's IPCC who had delivered the AR4 Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report in February and who were looking forward to the 13th Conference of the Parties in Bali that December.
There was no way the woman in the photo was
going to win in 2007, no matter how many kids she saved from certain
death and no matter how many of her bones the Gestapo broke.
She might have won in 2008 but she died. And the Nobel folks don't award posthumous prizes.
And from that October day in 2007:
Al Gore Beats Buddhist Monks
Al Gore, backed by his new band, Consensus, proved that superior showmanship wins out over amateur enthusiasm every time.
With James E. Hansen, PhD. on lead vocals, the monks didn't have a prayer....
...MUCH MORE
Sorry about the ramble, I'm trying to break the habit.
