Gore Urges Action After Nobel Prize Win
Former Vice President Al Gore, newly named co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, said Friday he hopes the honor will "elevate global consciousness" about the challenges of global warming.
Gore, whose documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Academy Award earlier this year, was awarded the prize earlier in the day along with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international network of scientists, for spreading awareness of man-made climate change and laying the foundations for counteracting it.
Shortly after the announcement, he pledged to donate his share of the $1.5 million prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan nonprofit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion worldwide about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.
"This is just the beginning," Gore told reporters at a meeting of the group. "Now is the time to elevate global consciousness about the challenges that we face."
Gore had been widely tipped to win Friday's prize, which expanded the Norwegian committee's interpretation of peacemaking and disarmament efforts that have traditionally been the award's foundations.
"We face a true planetary emergency," Gore said. "The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."
The Nobel committee chairman, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, asserted that the prize was not aimed at the Bush administration, which rejected Kyoto and was widely criticized outside the U.S. for not taking global warming seriously enough.
"We would encourage all countries, including the big countries, to challenge, all of them, to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming," Mjoes said. "The bigger the powers, the better that they come in front of this."
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."
"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."
Even before Gore's Nobel prize was announced, speculation began over whether a Nobel medal might cause Gore to consider becoming a candidate for president.
CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer said entering the race now would require Gore to overcome some substantial political obstacles.
"The core of his support would have to come from that part of the Democratic Party that Hillary Clinton seems to have sewed up so far," he told CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric. "The other part of his support would have to come from kind of the idealistic wing, that would be those voters that are for Barack Obama. I simply don't see him peeling off very much support from either of those two candidates and that would make it very, very difficult for him, it seems to me, to raise the money."
Two Gore advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to share his thinking, said the award will not make it any more likely that he will seek the presidency in 2008.
If anything, the Peace Prize makes the rough-and-tumble of a presidential race less appealing to Gore, they said, because now he has a huge, international platform to fight global warming and may not want to do anything to diminish it.
One of the advisers said that while Gore is unlikely to rule out a bid in the coming days, the prospects of the former vice president entering the fray in 2008 are "extremely remote."
As he left the room after making his statement, Gore ignored reporters asking if he planned to get into the presidential race.
"Winning a Nobel Peace Prize is a life changing event," Dylan Malone, who runs a Web site called AlGore.org, which advocates a Gore presidential run, told CBSNews.com's Brian Monotopoli. "He's done the slideshow, made the movie, won every accolade that our society has to give. There's nowhere else to go to take it to the next level in my mind."
According to recent CBS News polls, Gore remains popular among Democratic primary voters. In a poll conducted this summer, 55 percent of likely Democratic primary voters said they viewed the former vice president favorably, while only 20 percent had an unfavorable view. In April, a CBS News poll found that 35 percent of Americans believe Gore's positions go too far in protecting the environment at the expense of economic concerns, while 48 percent believe he strikes the right balance. (Read more CBS News poll analysis on Gore.)
Gore supporters have been raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for petition drives and advertising in an effort to lure him into the Democratic presidential primaries. One group, Draftgore.com, ran a full-page open letter to Gore in Wednesday's New York Times, imploring him to get into the race.
"I think the inconvenient truth for Al Gore president dreamers is he doesn't really want to run and a lot of Democrats think that's a wise decision," said Jim VandeHei, executive editor of Politico.com, on CBS News' The Early Show. "Al Gore does not have that fire in the belly that you need to mount a national campaign... But more importantly, Democrats seem satisfied with the candidates that they have right now."
Gore, 59, has been coy, saying repeatedly he's not running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, without ever closing that door completely.
He was the Democratic nominee in 2000 and won the general election popular vote. However, Gore lost the electoral vote to George W. Bush after a legal challenge to the Florida result that was decided by the Supreme Court.
"Eight years of the Clinton presidency - and one bitter campaign in 2000 - have left the two power couples estranged and, perhaps, resentful," writes CBSNews.com senior political editor Vaughn Ververs. "Another eight years later, Hillary Clinton is riding high in her bid to win the Democratic nomination and Al Gore is an international superstar."
Both Clintons, as well as several other presidential candidates and former president Jimmy Carter, made statements after Gore won the prize.
"Al Gore has been warning and educating us about the dangers of climate change for decades. He saw this coming before others in public life and never stopped pushing for action to save our planet, even in the face of public indifference and attacks from those determined to defend the indefensible," former president Bill Clinton said.
"Now the question is, will Al run?" added Ververs. "The answer is most likely no, but that doesn't mean Gore still can't cause plenty of trouble for Clinton in the nomination fight." (Read "The Revenge Of Al Gore?")
© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Gore, whose documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Academy Award earlier this year, was awarded the prize earlier in the day along with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international network of scientists, for spreading awareness of man-made climate change and laying the foundations for counteracting it.
Shortly after the announcement, he pledged to donate his share of the $1.5 million prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan nonprofit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion worldwide about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.
"This is just the beginning," Gore told reporters at a meeting of the group. "Now is the time to elevate global consciousness about the challenges that we face."
Gore had been widely tipped to win Friday's prize, which expanded the Norwegian committee's interpretation of peacemaking and disarmament efforts that have traditionally been the award's foundations.
"We face a true planetary emergency," Gore said. "The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."
The Nobel committee chairman, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, asserted that the prize was not aimed at the Bush administration, which rejected Kyoto and was widely criticized outside the U.S. for not taking global warming seriously enough.
"We would encourage all countries, including the big countries, to challenge, all of them, to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming," Mjoes said. "The bigger the powers, the better that they come in front of this."
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."
"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."
Even before Gore's Nobel prize was announced, speculation began over whether a Nobel medal might cause Gore to consider becoming a candidate for president.
CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer said entering the race now would require Gore to overcome some substantial political obstacles.
"The core of his support would have to come from that part of the Democratic Party that Hillary Clinton seems to have sewed up so far," he told CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric. "The other part of his support would have to come from kind of the idealistic wing, that would be those voters that are for Barack Obama. I simply don't see him peeling off very much support from either of those two candidates and that would make it very, very difficult for him, it seems to me, to raise the money."
Two Gore advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to share his thinking, said the award will not make it any more likely that he will seek the presidency in 2008.
If anything, the Peace Prize makes the rough-and-tumble of a presidential race less appealing to Gore, they said, because now he has a huge, international platform to fight global warming and may not want to do anything to diminish it.
One of the advisers said that while Gore is unlikely to rule out a bid in the coming days, the prospects of the former vice president entering the fray in 2008 are "extremely remote."
As he left the room after making his statement, Gore ignored reporters asking if he planned to get into the presidential race.
"Winning a Nobel Peace Prize is a life changing event," Dylan Malone, who runs a Web site called AlGore.org, which advocates a Gore presidential run, told CBSNews.com's Brian Monotopoli. "He's done the slideshow, made the movie, won every accolade that our society has to give. There's nowhere else to go to take it to the next level in my mind."
According to recent CBS News polls, Gore remains popular among Democratic primary voters. In a poll conducted this summer, 55 percent of likely Democratic primary voters said they viewed the former vice president favorably, while only 20 percent had an unfavorable view. In April, a CBS News poll found that 35 percent of Americans believe Gore's positions go too far in protecting the environment at the expense of economic concerns, while 48 percent believe he strikes the right balance. (Read more CBS News poll analysis on Gore.)
Gore supporters have been raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for petition drives and advertising in an effort to lure him into the Democratic presidential primaries. One group, Draftgore.com, ran a full-page open letter to Gore in Wednesday's New York Times, imploring him to get into the race.
"I think the inconvenient truth for Al Gore president dreamers is he doesn't really want to run and a lot of Democrats think that's a wise decision," said Jim VandeHei, executive editor of Politico.com, on CBS News' The Early Show. "Al Gore does not have that fire in the belly that you need to mount a national campaign... But more importantly, Democrats seem satisfied with the candidates that they have right now."
Gore, 59, has been coy, saying repeatedly he's not running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, without ever closing that door completely.
He was the Democratic nominee in 2000 and won the general election popular vote. However, Gore lost the electoral vote to George W. Bush after a legal challenge to the Florida result that was decided by the Supreme Court.
"Eight years of the Clinton presidency - and one bitter campaign in 2000 - have left the two power couples estranged and, perhaps, resentful," writes CBSNews.com senior political editor Vaughn Ververs. "Another eight years later, Hillary Clinton is riding high in her bid to win the Democratic nomination and Al Gore is an international superstar."
Both Clintons, as well as several other presidential candidates and former president Jimmy Carter, made statements after Gore won the prize.
"Al Gore has been warning and educating us about the dangers of climate change for decades. He saw this coming before others in public life and never stopped pushing for action to save our planet, even in the face of public indifference and attacks from those determined to defend the indefensible," former president Bill Clinton said.
"Now the question is, will Al run?" added Ververs. "The answer is most likely no, but that doesn't mean Gore still can't cause plenty of trouble for Clinton in the nomination fight." (Read "The Revenge Of Al Gore?")
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Posted by GrammaWhamma at 10:06 PM : Oct 14, 2007,,,
Maybe, but with the endless drama in Iraq and elsewhere and WWIII brewing in the background, boring is good and a refreshing change don''t you think? The World needs a break and could actually use boring right now!
I love Global Warming.This year there''''s been an increase
in the sightings of babes in bikinis.I met 3 or 4 at the Live Earth concert not long ago.
Also can''''t wait till all the ice is gone at the pole-I''''ll be first there fishing.
Remember when the US gov gave away land and money to people just to settle parts of good old USA??
The canucks will be doing that soon.Tired of competing with hordes of illegals in overcrowded cities for a fistful of dollars?
By the way I''''m neither republican nor democrat.Like most people I''''m independent.
I could not have believed with blind faith, it had to be proven for me to believe... Plus as a nurse I got to see and hear many things..
All I can say to you is, if I am wrong then when I go into eternity I have nothing to loose, but if you are wrong????
Posted by californiar at 01:14 PM : Oct 13, 2007
Prove it!!!!!!!!!!!
and you are so very right. The trouble is that people cant seem to think for themselves.. all they have to do is look on the net at scientists against global warming, or the truth about global warming etc.. to see the other side, then and only then can they make a valuated opinion on the subject, but if they want to continue to give money to these lies and help make these people rich all for nothing then I suppose it is over to them..
The Ozone layer was found in about the late 1800''s...
By the late 1800s, atmospheric scientists had isolated carbon monoxide and .... Monitoring ozone levels in the south polar region
# 1840 - Christian Friedrich Schvnbein identifies ozone as a component of the lower atmosphere and names it.
# 1881 - W.N. Hartley identifies ozone as the substance that absorbs ultraviolet radiation from the sun at wavelengths below 290 nanometers. He also shows that ozone resides primarily at high altitudes.
Evidently they found that the ozone hole got bigger and smaller even back then..
The noble prize was also given to Dr. F. Sherwood Rowland in 1995, a pioneering researcher in the field of Chemistry for his work, (I gather on ozone).. but it now appears that at this stage the ozone hole is once again closing..
Two men given noble prizes on almost the same subject, hmmm
What about this list:
Top Ten Other Achievements Claimed By Al Gore
10. Was first human to grow an opposable thumb
9. Only man in world to sleep with someone named "Tipper"
8. Current Vice President - Moesha fan club
7. He invented the dog
6. While riding bicycle one day, accidentally invented the orgasmm
5. Pulled U.S. out of early 90''s recession by personally buying 6,000 T-shirts
4. Starred in CBS situation comedy with Juan Valdez, "Juan for Al, Al for Juan"
3. Was inspiration for Ozzy Osboune song "Crazy Train"
2. Came up with popular catchphrase "Don''t go there, girlfriend"
1. Gave mankind fire
You spelled your name wrong it should be calipornliar