The Nobel Peace Prize just isn’t what it used to be. For the second straight year, the prize, which counts Lech Walesa, Mikhail Gorbachev and Aung San Suu Kyi amongst its luminaries, was recently awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee to a distinguished recipient who ... had nothing to do with peace.

There is, interestingly, not a set mission statement or criterion for awarding the prize. Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were cited “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” Whatever the contribution of Al Gore and the IPCC to promoting a comprehensive approach to global warming, this is hogwash. He should not have won the prize.

Even more surprising, this is not the first time the prize has gone to an environmentalist. The forgotten Wangari Maathi won in 2004, mostly for planting 30 million trees across Africa. I doubt even the nominating committee can remember her name now. There are many environmentalists across the world. Why Maathi? The committee never made that clear. It’s truly hard to argue that either Maathi or Gore has contributed to peace on a level with the Dalai Lama (winner in 1989). Sorry folks, it just can’t be done.

The nominating committee is making the interesting argument that combating global warming will lead to a more peaceful world. While this is certainly something for academics and policymakers to debate, it’s not certain.

And does Gore really need the Nobel Prize anyway? The debate in the U.S. over global warming has fundamentally changed — companies and universities are competing to be the most green. Even the U.S., the last bastion of capitalism and oil conglomerates, is moving toward recognizing and addressing global warming. The man already won an Academy Award this past year, and a consolation-prize dinette set for his second-place finish in the 2000 presidential election. The Nobel Peace Prize does not confer much more attention on Gore than has already been lavished by the media.

Burmese monks courageously protested against a regime, leading to the deaths of many of them. The Vatican remains unrecognized for its extensive diplomatic efforts around the world (John Paul II never won). South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun and North Korean supremo Kim Jong-Il agreed to begin negotiations to formally end the Korean War. While Al Gore has done good work on behalf of the environment, the committee should have higher priorities than simply conferring legitimacy and prestige on a cause that really has nothing to do with peace. And if the committee cannot find a nominee who has contributed to a narrower definition of “peace,” then it shouldn’t award it to anyone, which is a strong statement in of itself. Or if they have no one to give it to but want to dole out Swedish kronor, they could just give it to the United Nations, which has won several times in various forms.

The committee seems to have lost its focus again, as it did last year with its award to the Grameen Bank, a pioneer of microfinance. While microfinance and global warming deserve global attention, the Norwegian Nobel Committee should not confer them legitimacy because these issues are clearly outside the historical purview of the prize. And as a result of big-name, tangentially-related stars like Al Gore winning, real peace movements on less visible corners of the globe don’t get the attention they deserve.

The Nobel Peace Prize is still a powerful endorsement of an individual or group’s beliefs and activities, despite questionable decisions in recent years. The Gore/IPCC victory denies the prize’s prestige to truly deserving people. Gore doesn’t need the prize to continue his efforts, and giving it to him only lessens the legitimacy of the Nobel Peace Prize as a genuine recognition of efforts to promote peace and end war.

Stuart Baimel really thinks that Yulia Tymoshenko, the star of Ukraine’s pro-democratic Orange revolution, should have won the Nobel Peace Prize this year.