Gore, UN climate panel win Nobel Peace Prize
Former US Vice President Al Gore and the UN climate panel won the
Nobel Peace Prize yesterday for their part in galvanising international
action against global warming before it “moves beyond man’s control”.
Gore and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) won “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”, the Norwegian
Nobel Committee said.
Former US Vice President Al Gore (left) IPCC chairman
Rajendra Pachauri (right) |
They were chosen to share the $1.5 million prize from a field of 181
candidates.
“He is probably the single individual who has done most to create
greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be
adopted,” the committee said of Gore.
“The IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the
connection between human activities and global warming,” it said.
“Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s
control,” the citation said of rising temperatures that could bring more
droughts, floods, rising seas. It was the second prize to a leading U.S.
Democrat during the presidency of Republican George W. Bush.
The 2002 prize went to former President Jimmy Carter, which the Nobel
committee head at the time called a “kick in the legs” to the U.S.
administration over preparations to invade Iraq.
Gore, age 59, said he was deeply honoured to win and said he would
donate his share of the prize money to the Alliance for Climate
Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organisation.
“This award is even more meaningful because I have the honour of
sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the
world’s preeminent scientific body devoted to improving our
understanding of the climate crisis — a group whose members have worked
tirelessly and selflessly for many years.” IPCC chairman Rajendra
Pachauri said he was overwhelmed.
“I can’t believe it, overwhelmed, stunned,” Pachauri told reporters
and co-workers after receiving the news on the phone at his office in
New Delhi.
“I feel privileged sharing it with someone as distinguished as him,”
he added, referring to Gore.
The IPCC groups 2,500 researchers from more than 130 nations and
issued reports this year blaming human activities for climate changes
ranging from more heat waves to floods. It was set up in 1988 by the
United Nations to help guide governments. In the run-up to the
announcement, speculation that Gore could win the Nobel prize prompted
questions about whether it could lead Gore to join the 2008 race for the
White House.
Monica Friedlander, founder of the group www.draftgore.com seeking to
get Gore to run, said it would now “be very difficult for him to say
no”.
“He’s in a position to make a big difference,” she said. The scope of
the prize established by the 1895 will of Swedish philanthropist and
inventor of dynamite Alfred Nobel has expanded over the decades from its
roots in peacemaking and disarmament to human rights from the 1960s, to
work for the environment and the fight against poverty.
Congratulations poured in from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon,
the President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barros, U.N.
Environment Programme chief Achim Steiner, environmental groups and
others.
Reuters
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