Gore and U.N. Panel Win Peace Prize

From The New York Times:

Gore_2 Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won 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.

He said he would donate his share of the $1.5 million that accompanies the prize to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit 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. ”He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.” It cited Gore’s awareness at an early stage ”of the climatic challenges the world is facing.

Gore, 59, has said he does not plan to run for president next year, despite a national movement to draft him, and Peace Prize committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said a possible run was not his concern.

More here.