The Nobel Committee announced today the recipients of this year's Peace Prize: Al Gore, former senator and vice president, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This year's winners were chosen "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about
man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures
that are needed to counteract such change," said the committee. "[Gore] is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater
worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted” to fix the climate problem, the Nobel committee added. They said the IPCC has “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming."
The fight against global warming and climate change reached a new level this year; it's hard to open a magazine or turn on a TV without seeing an article or show highlighting the current effects or future predictions of global warming. Gore's impassioned film and lecture series, combined with the IPCC's steadfast, rational, consensus-building reports, have made the issue unavoidable and very real. This award appears to vindicate Gore and the scientists of the IPCC of any lingering doubts as to the seriousness of their cause.
But why should the Peace Prize go to fighters against climate change? Traditionally, the prize is awarded to those who work to bring about peace and democracy, those who write treaties or form organizations, those who work for human rights. Compared to those issues, the problem of climate change may seem elusive and quasi-futuristic, but as Gore, the IPCC, and many others have argued, this is the most serious threat facing humanity today.
One of Nobel's original guidelines was that the award should go to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations." In their announcement the Nobel Committee was clear: fixing climate change is a global struggle, one that involves every nation, big and small. The IPCC itself is a clear model of the "fraternity between the nations" needed to make serious changes. While past recipients of the Peace Prize worked (or are working) to affect peace and human rights today, those working to reverse climate change work to affect peace and human rights tomorrow. Climate change will have a huge effect on humanity, hurting and displacing people like no war has before. Climate change, said the Nobel Committee, “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." Indeed, as resources grow thinner, the wars of the future may not be fought for land or religion, but for water, or oil.
"Fraternity between the nations," that is, people and governments listening and talking to each other, is exactly what we need right now, before it's too late to turn back.
More on the award from the New York Times
Summary of the 2007 IPCC Report
IPCC Address to the C40 Summit