Al Gore Awarded Nobel Peace Prize For Spearheading Global Warming Campaign
Posted October 12, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
He’s won international plaudits and even an Academy Award for his work to bring the issue of climate change to the masses and now former U.S. vice-president Al Gore can add another accolade to the growing list: the Nobel Peace Prize.
Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the prestigious prize in 2007 for their efforts to raise awareness of the problem of man-made climate change and what can be done to reverse the damage.
“I am deeply honoured 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 global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar earlier this year and he’d been considered the favourite to win the Nobel. He dedicated his share of the $1.5 million award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit group espousing the importance of conservation.
“(Gore’s) strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change,” the Nobel citation said. “He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.”
Supporters of the former vice-president have been raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hopes he’ll decide to enter the Democratic presidential primaries. The 59-year-old has said repeatedly he wouldn’t run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 but many are still pushing him in that direction. The group Draftgore.com ran an open-letter to him in the New York Times this week begging him to join the race.
As the Democratic nominee in 2000, Gore won the general election popular vote but lost the electoral vote to George W. Bush following a legal challenge to the results in Florida.
Former US vice president Al Gore speaks during a panel discussion at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York on 26 September 2007. (NICHOLAS ROBERTS/AFP/Getty Images)
