guest speakers

2004 Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai and Mayor Akiba of Hiroshima - in unrelated trips - both visited Tromsø during the last few days. It's great to be privy to such lectures and I appreciate the learning opprtunity. Wangari Maathai is a wonderful speaker - good with metaphors and clearly passionate about the environment. After hearing her speak the other day I find myself questioning the way we categorize "issues" - like "environmental issues" and "issues of human rights" and that tricky old "poverty issue." These "issues" are not independent from one another. They become "issues" because of one another and of course an environmentalist should win the Nobel Peace Prize. The degradation of the global environment will likely lead to the greatest conflict of them all: the mass extinction of human kind. Now there's a conflict.
And it would be lovely if everyone agreed that nuclear weapons should be abolished. But not everyone does and I'm not sure how (or if) we can get everyone to think so. There are people in auditoriums and lecture halls around the world applauding and giving standing ovations - "no to atomic bombs" and "save the environment" - but when they go home the most important thing they can think of is making sure the dog hasn't taken a dump on the carpet. I really enjoy guest speakers. But now someone please tell me what to do.