http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15217643
NPR.org, October
12, 2007 · Former
Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
were awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread
awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting
it.
"I am deeply
honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize," Gore said. "We face a true
planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral
and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."
Gore's film An
Inconvenient Truth, a documentary on global warming, won an Academy Award this
year and he had been widely expected to win the prize.
In awarding him the
prize, the Nobel Committee citation said that Gore "is probably the single
individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the
measures that need to be adopted."
The U.N.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is less well known. It's a global
network of 2,000 scientists who have labored for years on reports and plans to
counter global warming.
Ralph Cicerone,
president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that the IPCC released its
first report on the global environment in 1990, after being formed in the late
'80s.
Since then, the
group has published comprehensive reports every five years or so — its latest came
out this year.
The IPCC is broken
into three main groups, Cicerone said: one on the scientific basis of climate
change; a second on the impact, adaptation and vulnerability of climate; and
another on mitigation and adaptation to changes.
"And they also
involve hundreds of scientists and reviewers from all around the world,"
Cicerone said.
In recent years,
the Nobel Committee has broadened the interpretation of the concept of
peacemaking. On Friday, it said global warming is creating greater competition for
the Earth's resources, which it warned could lead to an increased danger of
violent conflicts and wars.
Global warming, the
committee said, "may induce large-scale migration," which could
"place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable
countries."
Presidential Bid
Not Likely
Gore said he would
donate his share of the $1.5 million that accompanies the prize to the Alliance
for Climate Protection, a bipartisan nonprofit organization devoted to
conveying the urgency of solving the climate crisis.
"His strong
commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has
strengthened the struggle against climate change," the Nobel citation
said.
Gore supporters
have been raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for petition drives and
advertising in an effort to lure him into the Democratic presidential
primaries.
NPR's Washington
Editor Ron Elving said that winning the Nobel will do little to ease the calls
for Gore to enter the 2008 race.
"The people
who already wanted him to run for president are going to demand that he run for
president," Elving said.
One group,
Draftgore.com, ran a full-page open letter to Gore in Wednesday's New York
Times, imploring him to get into the race.
Gore, 59, has said
repeatedly that he's not running for the Democratic presidential nomination in
2008, without ever closing that door completely. But Gore isn't likely to make
a late entry, Elving said.
"Under the
current circumstances, with Hillary Clinton lapping the field, and with her $80
million ahead of him, and Barack Obama $80 million ahead of him, this would not
be the time," he said.
Still, Elving said
he believes that Gore has decided that he has one last chance for the
presidency in his political future, "and he did not want to spend that one
more good run at it running against Hillary Clinton," Elving said.
"That would divide the Clinton base, the Clinton organization, the Clinton
money sources. It didn't make sense."
Instead, Elving
said, Gore will likely use his recent accolades as another tool to ensure that
climate change is part of the conversation in the 2008 election campaign.
Peace Prize
committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said a possible Gore presidential run was
not his concern.
"I want this
prize to have everyone ... every human being, asking what they should do,"
Mjoes said. "What he [Gore] decides to do from here is his personal
decision."
The last American
to win the prize or share it was former President Carter in 2002.
IPCC Forecasts
Impact of Rising Temperatures
The Nobel Committee
cited the Panel on Climate Change for two decades of scientific reports that
have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection
between human activities and global warming."
Members of the
panel were surprised that it was chosen to share the honor with Gore, a
spokeswoman said.
"We would have
been happy even if he had received it alone because it is a recognition of the
importance of this issue," spokeswoman Carola Traverso Saibante said.
The panel
forecasted this year that all regions of the world will be affected by climate
warming and that a third of the Earth's species will vanish if global
temperatures continue to rise until they are 3.6 degrees above the average
temperature in the 1980s and '90s.
"Decisive
action in the next decade can still avoid some of the most catastrophic
scenarios the IPCC has forecast," said Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate
official.
He urged consensus
among the United States and other countries on attacking the problem.
Climate change has
moved high on the international agenda this year. The U.N. climate panel has
been releasing reports, talks on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on
climate are set to resume and on Europe's northern fringe, where the awards
committee works, there is growing concern about the melting Arctic.
Two of the past
three prizes have been untraditional, with the 2004 award to Kenya
environmentalist Wangari Maathai and last year's award to Bangladeshi economist
Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank, which makes to micro-loans to the
country's poor.
Text from
Associated Press and NPR Reports