Nobel dynamite

All he is saying, is give peace a chance.

No, not John Lennon, but Fredrik Heffermehl, a Norwegian jurist and critic of the selection process for the Nobel Peace Prize. It could mean trouble for the Nobel committee, which faces a formal investigation of its selections.

"[Alfred] Nobel called it a prize for the champions of peace," Mr. Heffermehl says, "and it's indisputable that he had in mind the peace movement … a new global order where nations safely can drop national armaments." Mr. Heffermehl's beef is that the Nobel committee, appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, has broadened the category and awarded the prize for work in environmental, humanitarian, and other fields.

In 2007, former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations panel on climate change won the prize for alerting the world to the threat of global warming. Two years later, President Obama won for his "extraordinary" efforts on behalf of international diplomacy -- although he appears to have been chosen mainly because he wasn't George W. Bush.

It falls to the Stockholm County Administrative Body to judge whether the terms of the will of Alfred Nobel, the industrialist and inventor of dynamite, are being followed. But the guidelines for the peace price are more idealistic than helpful in the modern world, seeking to honor "the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

An expansive reading of the awards criteria makes more sense. It would be a shame if individual voices of conscience could not be honored, as were Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in 2010 and Soviet human rights activist Andrei Sakharov in 1975. They did not hold and promote peace congresses or call for the abolition of armies, because they couldn't, but they were witnesses to humanity.

Even work on climate change shouldn't disqualify anyone; if the scientists are right, climate change will ride with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Give peace a chance, for sure. But give reasonableness a chance to recognize kindred humanitarians.