Al Gore, UN panel share Nobel for Peace

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071012/ap_on_re_eu/nobel_peace

Al Gore, UN panel share Nobel for Peace
By DOUG MELLGREN and MATT MOORE, Associated Press Writers
10-12-7

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change jointly won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for fighting it.

Gore, who won an Academy Award earlier this year for his film on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," had been widely tipped to win the prize.

He said that global warming was not a political issue but a worldwide crisis.

"We face a true planetary emergency. ... It is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity," he said. "It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level."

The win is also likely add further fuel to a burgeoning movement in the United States for Gore to run for president in 2008, which he has so far said he does not plan to do.

Kenneth Sherrill, a political scientist at Hunter College in New York said Gore probably enjoys being a public person more than an elected official.

"He seems happier and liberated in the years since his loss in 2000. Perhaps winning the Nobel and being viewed as a prophet in his own time will be sufficient," says Sherrill.

Two Gore advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to share his thinking, said the award will not make it more likely that he will seek the presidency. 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."

In its citation, the committed lauded Gore's "strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."

Ole Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the prize committee, said the award should not be seen as singling out the Bush administration for criticism.

"A peace prize is never a criticism of anything. A peace prize is a positive message and support to all those champions of peace in the world."

Bush abandoned the Kyoto Protocol because he said it would harm the U.S. economy and because it did not require immediate cuts by countries like China and India. The treaty aimed to put the biggest burden on the richest nations that contributed the most carbon emissions.

The U.S. Senate voted against mandatory carbon reductions before the Kyoto negotiations were completed. The treaty was never presented to the Senate for ratification by the Clinton Administration.

"Al Gore has fought the environment battle even as vice president," Mjoes said. "Many did not listen ... but he carried on."

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.

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.

Gore called the award meaningful because of his co-winner, calling the IPCC the "world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis."

Gore said he planned to donate his share of the prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan nonprofit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

The last American to win the prize, or share it, was former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who won it 2002.

The committee cited the IPCC for its two decades of scientific reports that have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming. Thousands of scientists and officials from over 100 countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming."

It went on to say that because of the panel's efforts, global warming has been increasingly recognized. In the 1980s it "seemed to be merely an interesting hypothesis, the 1990s produced firmer evidence in its support. In the last few years, the connections have become even clearer and the consequences still more apparent."

"It was a surprise," said Carola Traverso Saibante, spokeswoman for the IPCC. "We would have been happy even if (Gore) had received it alone because it is a recognition of the importance of this issue."

But some questioned the prize decision.

"Awarding it to Al Gore cannot be seen as anything other than a political statement. Awarding it to the IPCC is well-founded," said Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist."

He criticized Gore's film as having "some very obvious mistakes, like the argument that we're going to see six meters of sea-level rise," he said.

"They (Nobel committee) have a unique platform in getting people's attention on this issue, and I regret they have used it to make a political statement."

This year, climate change has been at the top of the world agenda. The U.N. climate panel has been releasing its 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, concern about the melting Arctic has been underscored by this being the International Polar Year.

Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, said the prize would help to continue the globally growing awareness of climate change.

"Their contributions to the prevention of climate change have raised awareness all over the world. Their work has been an inspiration for politicians and citizens alike," he said in a statement.

In recent years, the Norwegian committee has broadened its 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.

"We believe that the Nobel Committee has shown great courage by so clearly connecting the climate problems with peace," said Truls Gulowsen, head of environmental group Greenpeace Norway.

The Nobel Prizes each bestow a gold medal, a diploma and a $1.5 million cash prize on the winner.
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On the Net:

http://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/

Leo Lands on Planet Green

http://yahoo.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=d2f17184-20ff-4f75-b7e0-914d685ee58f

Leo Lands on Planet Green
by Natalie Finn

Leonardo DiCaprio is taking one small step for an A-list celebrity, and one giant leap for the environment.

The card-carrying hybrid driver has partnered up with Discovery Communications to executive-produce a reality series chronicling the eco-friendly rebuild of Greensburg, Kansas, which was decimated by a fierce tornado in May.

The 13-part series will be for the Discovery Channel's latest offshoot, the 24/7 cable network Planet Green, which is scheduled to launch early next year, taking the place of Discovery Home in your local listings.

"This is at the center of what we want to do with Planet Green," Discovery Communications president and CEO David Zaslav said Friday at his network's Television Critics Association presentation in Beverly Hills. "This is not about a TV show and about a cable channel that reaches 50 million homes…we’re the number one non-fiction media company in the world, but we also want to make a difference."

It was reported in October that DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way, had a reality show in the works called E-topia that, inspired by the widespread damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, would follow a team of construction workers, urban planners and environmentalists as they gave a rundown town a top-to-bottom green makeover.

Sadly, the natural disaster in Greensburg on May 4 made the tight-knit farming community about 110 miles west of Wichita a prime candidate for the series' efforts. The tornado killed 10 and displaced nearly all of the rest of the town's 1,500 residents, leveling practically every house, business, hospital and school in the process.

Planet Network's new show will follow state and local officials in their quest to create an ecologically—and economically—sustainable locale and encourage the storm's victims to return to their homes.

Pilgrim Films & Television's Craig Piligian, who originally brought the now-untitled project to DiCaprio last year, will also serve as an executive producer.

DiCaprio, who hosted the ABC News special Planet Earth 2000 and has long been a champion of green causes, has also been invited to sit on the Planet Green Board of Advisers, along with leading advocacy groups such as the Nature Conservancy and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Oscar-nominated actor was on hand to address the Live Earth crowd about reducing carbon emissions last weekend at Giants Stadium, and he was the chosen celeb who got to joke with An Inconvenient Truth guru Al Gore at the Academy Awards about the possibilities for another presidential run in 2008.

And while DiCaprio is busy putting his name and money to good use, he'll be doing his best to beautify a few studios' box office returns, as well.

Up next he stars in the period drama Revolutionary Road along with Kate Winslet, playing one half of a disenchanted suburban couple that picks up and moves to France to pursue their bohemian ideals. The film, based on the Richard Yates novel, is slated for a December 2008 release.

DiCaprio is also set to costar with Russell Crowe in the Ridley Scott-directed CIA thriller Body of Lies, which is expected to start shooting this fall.