OSLO, Norway - 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.
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Gore won an Academy Award this year for his film "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary on global warming, and had been widely expected to win the prize.
"His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change," the 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.
The committee cited the Panel on Climate Change for two decades of scientific reports that have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming."
Climate change has moved high on the international agenda this year. The U.N. climate panel has been releasing reports, talks on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate are set to resume and on Europe's northern fringe, where the awards committee works, there is growing concern about the melting Arctic.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said global warming, "may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth's resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states."
Jan Egeland, a Norwegian peace mediator and former U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, also called climate change more than an environmental issue.
"It is a question of war and peace," said Egeland, now director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo. "We're already seeing the first climate wars, in the Sahel belt of Africa." He said nomads and herders are in conflict with farmers because the changing climate has brought drought and a shortage of fertile lands.
The committee often uses the coveted prize to cast the global spotlight on a relatively little-known person or cause. Since Gore already has a high profile some had doubted that the committee would bestow the prize on him "because he does not need it."
In recent years, the committee has broadened the interpretation of peacemaking and disarmament efforts outlined by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in creating the prize with his 1895 will. The prize now often also recognizes human rights, democracy, elimination of poverty, sharing resources and the environment.
Two of the past three prizes have been untraditional, with the 2004 award to Kenya environmentalist Wangari Maathai and last year's award to Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank, which makes to micro-loans to the country's poor.
ok the reason im bloging about this is that Al Gore and the UN have sold the world bill of goods that is false. most of the information in Al Gores movie is false or out and out lies. the science used in the movie is just wrong, he and the scientists have not looked at every piece of information from all over the world from scientists who have been looking in to the problem far longer than Al Gore has. Al Gore has ignored them and anyone else who doesn't go with what he wants and thinks if the science doesn't go with what he wants it to show then he tosses it out and looks for a scientist who will give him what he wants. he getting the noble peace prize makes the award nothing more than an Emmy or Oscar for movies and actors it degrades it to just another hunk of metal that is given out just to be given out. the ones who first started giving the award out are turning over in their graves screaming for justice.
