UBIEE Latest WORLD NEWS - Al Gore, UN Climate Panel Share 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

Al Gore, UN Climate Panel Share 2007 Nobel Peace
Prize

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aNq8y9GYqwj8&refer=home

By Bunny Nooryani and Kim Chipman

Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and a United
Nations panel on the environment won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for raising
awareness about the threat of climate change.

Gore, 59, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were honored for
``their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about manmade
climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to
counteract such change,'' said Ole Danbolt Mjoes, director of the Oslo-based
Nobel Committee that picks the winner.

The peace prize tops off a year of accolades for Gore, marking a turnaround
that some say makes him ``the comeback kid,'' a moniker typically associated
with his former boss, Bill Clinton. The former vice president last year
published the book and released the Oscar-winning documentary film ``An
Inconvenient Truth'' as part of a campaign against global warming.

India's Rajendra Pachauri, 67, is chairman of the IPCC, which was set up by
the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental
Program in 1988. The group has about 2,500 scientists whose mandate is to assess
``scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the
understanding of 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 prize is ``a recognition of the contribution of the scientific world,''
Pachauri told reporters today in New Delhi.

Human Cause

The IPCC said in a report in February that the probability that humans are
causing global warming is 90 percent, and world temperatures and sea-levels will
increase by the end of the century. The Bush administration said the human role
in climate change is ``no longer up for debate'' following the report.

``There are already climate wars unfolding and the worst area for that is the
Sahel belt in Africa,'' Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Institute of
International Affairs, told reporters in Oslo on Sept. 28. ``Nomads fight
pastoral farmers because there is less land available, because of long-term
climate change.''

``Clearly we are endangering all species on earth, we are endangering the
future of the human race,'' Pachauri said in an interview earlier this year.
``We are probably beyond the stage where we could have called it urgent. I would
say it is immediate,'' he said, referring to the need for governments to reduce
emissions.

Glaciers Melting

Scientists have said global warming caused by manmade emissions is
responsible for melting glaciers and ice sheets, and increased instances of
storms, droughts and floods. Over this century, those effects may be magnified,
according to the February report.

``The consequences of inaction will be devastating to both the environment
and the economy,'' Gore told the U.S. Congress at a special climate change
hearing this year.

Gore, vice president from 1993 until 2001, drew an audience of an estimated 2
billion people on July 7 with Live Earth, a single day of concerts on seven
continents aimed at promoting awareness of what he terms a ``climate crisis.''

Growing up, Gore's time was divided between Washington, where his father was
in the U.S. Senate, where he would later serve, and his family's sprawling farm
in Tennessee.

Harvard Graduate

Shortly after graduating from Harvard University in 1969, Gore enlisted in
the Army and served for six months as a military reporter in Vietnam. He then
spent five years at the Tennessean, a Nashville newspaper. He also attended, yet
never graduated, from Vanderbilt University's divinity and law schools. He was
first elected to the House of Representatives in 1976.

Gore married his wife, Tipper, in 1970. They met at Gore's high school prom
at St. Alban's, an elite Washington prep school. They have four children,
Karenna, Kristin, Sarah and Albert III. Gore has multiple homes, though his main
residence is in Nashville.

As President George W. Bush and his former colleagues in Congress grapple
with record-low job approval ratings, Gore has spent the last year basking in
the limelight and taking his environmental message to venues ranging from the
Grammy Awards to ``The Oprah Show'' to Capitol Hill. In May, he also published
``The Assault on Reason,'' a best-selling book that's highly critical of the
Bush administration.

Gore's success is seen by supporters as vindication for a man who
acknowledges his discomfort in a political world driven largely by sound bites.

Panned by Pundits

The former Tennessee senator was panned by some pundits and late-night comics
during the 2000 election for reportedly claiming to ``invent the Internet'' and
similar types of comments, at least one of which was later shown to be
misquotation.

Former President George H.W. Bush derided Gore as ``ozone man'' during his
1992 campaign against Clinton. In his 2000 race against George W. Bush, Gore was
widely ridiculed by Republicans as too much of a stiff ``know-it-all'' to
connect with average voters.

Yet Gore's popularity surged after the release of ``An Inconvenient Truth,''
a documentary film featuring the former vice president lecturing worldwide about
the threat of global warming. The movie also touches on Gore's personal life,
including the psychological aftermath of his stinging loss to Bush in the
disputed 2000 presidential election.

British Case

Gore's documentary has been distributed to all British secondary schools by
the U.K. government. A High Court judge in London this week ruled that the film
contains scientific errors and that students must view it with guidance notes to
prevent political indoctrination. The film has nine main errors with some
arising in the context of ``alarmism and exaggeration,'' Judge Michael Burton
ruled.

The film garnered critical and commercial praise, earning two Academy Awards.
Gore also won an Emmy award last month for Current TV, a cable and satellite
television network for young people that's based on viewer-created content and
``citizen journalism.'' Gore co-created the channel and serves as its chairman.

Gore is chairman of Generation Investment Management LLP, a firm focused on
long-term sustainable investing. Gore also is a board member of Cupertino,
California-based Apple Inc. and has been a senior adviser to Google Inc., owner
of the world's most popular Internet search engine.

Gore was awarded stock options at both Apple and Google that have made him a
multimillionaire, a fact supporters point to when talking about the possibility
of Gore jumping into the 2008 presidential fray.

2000 Election

Gore won the popular vote for president in 2000, though he lost the
presidency to Bush when the Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote ordered the end to a
vote recount in Florida.

While Gore has repeatedly said he has no plans to run for office, the
prospect of his Nobel Prize win has reinvigorated a grassroots campaign calling
for the former vice president to declare his candidacy.

This week a group called DraftGore.com placed an open letter in the New York
Times urging Gore to run. The letter, in the form of a full-page advertisement,
said 136,000 people have signed its petition asking Gore to run.

Other Democratic candidates don't have Gore's ``vision, standing in the
world, and political courage,'' the group said in the letter. The group
criticized the Bush administration's policy on the war on terrorism and
commended Gore's early stance against the war in Iraq.

``There are times for politicians and times for heroes. America and the Earth
need a hero right now,'' the letter said. ``Please rise to this challenge, or
you and millions of us will live forever wondering what might have been.''

Alfred Nobel

The peace prize, worth 10 million kronor (.56 million) was created in the
will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel more than a century ago. Past
recipients include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter
and the Red Cross. The prize was first handed out in 1901.

Bangladesh's Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank won last year for advancing
social and economic development by giving loans to the poor.

The honor is formally awarded at a ceremony in Oslo on Dec. 10, the
anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896. Nobel also set up prizes for achievements
in physics, medicine, chemistry and literature, which were announced earlier
this week by the Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation.

The recipient of an economics award, established in memory of Nobel by
Sweden's central bank in 1969, will be made known on Oct. 15.

To contact the reporters on this story: Bunny Nooryani in Oslo at bnooryani@bloomberg.net ; Kim
Chipman in New York at kchipman@bloomberg.net .