AL GORE & RAJENDRA PACHAURI RECEIVE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
Oslo, December 10, 2007 (DPA)

Former US vice president Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN climate panel, Monday received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to highlight man-made climate change. The award is worth 10 million kronor ($1.53 million), and includes a gold medal and diploma. Guests at the ceremony included Norwegian King Harald V, Queen Sonja, Crown Prince Haakon, Crown Princess Mette-Marit and cabinet members who gave the two laureates a standing ovation.

Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Ole Danbolt Mjos said Gore, 59, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had helped "lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract" this. In his speech at the award ceremony in Oslo City Hall, Mjos said the committee's choice "was not especially difficult," citing how "climate-related issues are moving up the political agenda."

Mjos said the approach adopted by the UN climate panel created in 1988 with its some 2,500 scientists and ongoing assessments of climate change could be considered in other fields, noting "biological diversity, desertification and overfishing of the seas." He cited Gore as "the single individual who has done most to prepare the ground for political action" to take on "climate change."

In his acceptance speech, Gore said "the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising," referring to the effects of global warming. These "cumulative actions" by mankind were comparable with waging "war on the earth," he said adding, "it is time to make peace with the planet."

IPCC chairman Pachauri of India said the award was a tribute to "the importance of the role of knowledge in shaping public policy." Pachauri listed the impact of climate change on many areas including food security, health, and access to clean water. He recalled the collapse of great civilizations like the Maya, Khmer and those of Mesopotamia due to serious drought, degradation or depletion of natural resources.

Gore is later this week due to attend the UN climate conference meeting on Bali island, Indonesia and said he would urge delegates to "adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading." He also said China and the US as the largest emitters of greenhouse gases "need to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act."

In Bali, Russel Mittermeier, President of Conservation International, said, "Nobel Prizes go to visionaries. The simple fact is that Al Gore was warning us about the climate issue before most people even knew it existed," recalling a 1989 meeting where Gore gave him a presentation on the matter.

The Peace Prize is one of the awards endowed by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. In accordance with Nobel's will, the peace prize is handed out in Oslo. The Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry and economics were to be handed out later Monday in the Swedish capital, Stockholm. Literature prize winner Doris Lessing was unable to attend the ceremony and is to receive her award in London