Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize

[sharon_b]

Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president and presidential candidate who reinvented himself as an environmentalist, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his efforts to fight global warming.

Gore shares the prize with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize," Gore said in an e-mailed statement. "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."

The Nobel committee in Oslo, Norway, announced the news at 11 a.m. local time – 5 a.m. on the East Coast – and praised Gore as being "one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians."

"He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted," said Ole Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the Nobel committee.

As a Nobel laureate, Gore receives a gold medal, a diploma and splits 10 million Swedish kronor – about $1.7 million – with the IPCC.

Gore, 59, served as Bill Clinton's vice president for eight years and narrowly lost the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush. Since leaving elected office, Gore has relentlessly shined a spotlight on the issue of global warming.

His 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, about the climate crisis, won the Academy Award for best documentary. Gore is also an recent Emmy winner through his Current TV network.

An Important Issue

The IPCC, which draws on the work of 2,000 scientists, said the panel was surprised that it had been chosen to share the award with Gore.

"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 Associated Press reported.

Some 181 individuals or organizations were known to have been nominated for the Peace Prize this year. (Their identities are kept secret.) But with global warming commanding much attention this year, Gore had been tipped as a front-runner for the award.

There has also been speculation that winning the Nobel Prize could be a springboard for Gore to enter the 2008 U.S. presidential race. Gore has declined to comment on that notion.

Over the years, the Nobel committee has broadened the scope of the Peace Prize from traditional conflict prevention and resolution to include humanitarian and human-rights work. An environmental leader, Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai, was also honored in 2002.

Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, shared the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 with Frédéric Passy, a leading international pacifist.

Al Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize : People.com

[darksithbunny]

Is there anyone else here that feels he shouldn't have gotten this?

[hotncmom]

This is the guy who claimed to have invented the internet, right? Yeah, can't believe he won.

[BoogsBun]

I never pay attention to this stuff. I couldn't tell you who won last year, without googling it. I'm sure I will forget this year's too by next week.

[McJag]

This is a very great honor and I am proud of him.

[sharon_b]

Some thing tells me Dubya Bush isn't gonna be happy with this news

[buttmunch]

Abolutely think he deserved it and kudos to the Committee for doing it. Second, he didn't claim to event the internet--that was a misrepresentation in the press during the 2000 election cycle, something encouraged by the repugs and unsurprisingly people fell for it.

I think he's great for not giving a flying fuck what anybody thinks about his work towards bringing the issue of global warming to the attention of so many. Good on him.

[crumpet]

I feel that this prize has been devalued as a result of this. He is too , I don't know, 'pop culturey' right now. I cannot believe there wasn't somebody trying to save lives in Darfur or someplace who wouldn't have deserved the 'PeaceP prize more.

[analyzer]

Originally Posted by crumpet

I feel that this prize has been devalued as a result of this. He is too , I don't know, 'pop culturey' right now. I cannot believe there wasn't somebody trying to save lives in Darfur or someplace who wouldn't have deserved the 'PeaceP prize more.

I agree. When I heard this I was like WTF?? Yes his contribution is significant in terms of increased awareness generated by his activism but to give him a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in my opinion is over reaching. It seems that his popularity played in role in this recognition and a Nobel Peace Prize isn't, well shouldn't be about popularity or what's topical.

[PaintTheTownRed]

Congrats Al !!!

[kchal]

Originally Posted by buttmunchv.2

Abolutely think he deserved it and kudos to the Committee for doing it. Second, he didn't claim to event the internet--that was a misrepresentation in the press during the 2000 election cycle, something encouraged by the repugs and unsurprisingly people fell for it..

Really? - I just heard the clip of him saying it this morning on the radio and it was word for word "...I created the internet"....

[PaintTheTownRed]

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Al Gore Invented the Internet

The internet as we use it today in the US was in part because of Al Gore. The 2nd to last paragraph explains the Acts he sponsored and cosponsored.

[buttmunch]

^^Thank you. So much gets taken out of context and is then used to smear a person. There was a huge article in Vanity Fair recently on Gore and things he supposedly 'claimed' and it was all pretty much debunked. I'm pretty sure he, like most of us, is less than perfect and says stupid stuff often enough, but at the end of the day he strikes me as a pretty ok guy (despite the annoying Tipper).

As far as this somehow lowering the prestige of the Peace Prize, read the mandate the Norwegian Nobel Committee was given by Alfred Nobel. I mean, I suppose the year Wangari Matthai won alot of people could have said a better issue in Africa could have been highlighted but she contributed to the world in a unique way, thus the Committee deemed it appropriate for her to recieve it. I mean, christ, they gave it to Mother Theresa of all people!

[Grimmlok]

Um, the Nobel Peace Prize is given out for many different fields each year. Physics, humanitarian, chemistry, environmental sciences, etc etc etc..

it's not ONE big prize for ONE thing.

[analyzer]

^^
Well I think that's a pretty well known fact so my comments were in reference to the field he was awarded in.