Al Gore joint winner of Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize winner ... Al Gore.
Photo: Sahlan Hayes
The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded today to former US vice-president Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Norwegian Nobel committee announced in Oslo.
It said they had been awarded the prize "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".
Mr Gore, a vice-president to Bill Clinton and failed candidate for the White House in 2000, has reinvented himself as a champion of climate change with his 2006 Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
The IPCC, a UN body comprised of about 3000 atmospheric
scientists, oceanographers, ice specialists, economists and other
experts, is the world's top scientific authority on global warming
and its impact.
Climate change "not a political issue": Gore
Mr Gore said he was honoured to share the Nobel Peace Prize with
the UN climate panel today for its work on global warming and said
climate change was a moral, not political, issue.
"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. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global
consciousness to a higher level," he said in a statement.
"I am deeply honoured to receive the Nobel Peace Prize," he
said.
"This award is even more meaningful because I have the honour of
sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the
world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our
understanding of the climate crisis - a group whose members have
worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years."
The laureates will receive a gold medal, a diploma and 10 million
Swedish kronor ($1.7 million) to be shared between them.
Mr Gore said he would donate all of his share of the cash.
"My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 per cent of the proceeds of
the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan
non-profit organisation that is devoted to changing public opinion
in the US and around the world about the urgency of solving the
climate crisis."
The Alliance for Climate Protection is the non-profit group Mr Gore
founded last year to raise public awareness of climate change.
White House praises winners
The White House praised Mr Gore and the IPCC for their
work to raise awareness of the threat of global warming.
"Of course we're happy for vice-president Gore and the IPCC for
receiving this recognition," White House spokesman Tony Fratto
said.
Mr Gore has been a vocal critic of the environmental policies of
President George Bush, who beat him narrowly in a disputed
presidential election result in 2000.
Ceremony on anniversary of Nobel's death
The formal prize ceremony will be held in Oslo as tradition
dictates on December 10, the anniversary of the death in 1896 of
the prize's creator, Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite
Alfred Nobel.
The prizes were first awarded in 1901.
Earlier this week, the prizes for medicine, physics and chemistry were announced.
Yesterday, British writer Doris Lessing won the Nobel Literature Prize for five decades of epic novels that have covered feminism and politics, as well her youth in Africa.
The economics prize will wrap up the 2007 Nobel season on Monday.
AFP, Reuters
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