We have peace in our times ...

Al Gore, the distinguished ex-vice-president of the US, as he likes to put it, was given the nobel peace prize for 2007, shared with the UN. It is a very noble prize, right up there with the highest accolades that we as humans can give to our fellows. It is also very well deserved, for this man has almost single-handedly alerted the world to the seriousness of global climate issues.

I accept that audiences who have seen "An Inconvenient Truth" differ in their responses to his views, but the world is more alert to the state of the planet and the risks facing humanity, thanks to his efforts.

As he points out, Churchill had a similar go at arousing the British people to the threat facing his own generation from the awakening giant of Germany. Churchill, not a modest man, said on the night he was asked to lead the country, something like "now we are getting somewhere" - at least his words had teeth, not like Neville Chamberlain's toothless idea of "peace in our times".

But aside from the perils facing our global climate and the threats of terrorism, a threat as comparable as a single mosquito is to household, there is another voice crying in the wilderness. If you follow middle-east news, Israeli PM Ehurt Olmert has been warning of a crisis of third world war proportions in the middle east. Other issues of biblical proportion are also making the news: the threat of avian flu, an increase in tropical storm frequency and intensity, instability in the earth's crust, the decline of the nuclear family, the proliferation of social unrest and crime, the US mortgage market meltdown, global economic crises ... the list goes on.

I wonder ... at what point will we actually admit we may have a problem. Have we become like Ostriches, buried in our own excrement. The world is in a mess, yet materialism has induced such comfortable denial and apathy, that we are only likely to see the crisis when its too late.

I have heard speeches and seen movies that keep you laughing until a punch-line slumps us straight in the middle of a serious reality, forcing us to stop smiling and start thinking seriously. Well right now people are living it up, having fun, living dangerously and wandering around with rather ignorant smiles .... ahem!, methinks a big punch-line will hit soon and everyone will suddenly find themselves in a very serious reality, but by then it will probably be too little, too late.

(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com