Al Gore Gives Away His Nobel Prize Money To Environmental Causes

For 30 years, Al Gore has worked on bringing global warming to the attention of the world community. Now at long last he has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. This comes as the Bush Administration continues to woo, cater to, and give free reign the biggest polluters on the planet. But Gore’s message prevails in spite of the defamation by big corporations. He succeeds despite the attacks that he is politicizing. Why? Because his message is not political, it is biological. It is fundamental to every person and living being in the world. We all have to have clean air, water and soil in order to thrive and for the planet to live in harmony.

The world is waking up, and Gore’s winning of the Nobel Peace prize means people are listening to his reason and his science.

“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.”

Gore will donate his half 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.

What does this Nobel Peace Prize mean? It offers hope to a new generation that is inheriting a tortured planet. If you are under age 30, this is especially significant. Gores’ recognition shows that climate change is a predominant issue of importance even as the world’s largest corporations try to marginalize it as they fail to participate in Kyoto and other conferences.

Eighty-four percent in the U.S. believe world temperatures are rising, according to a poll last month by The Associated Press and Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment. Yet while about seven in 10 said they want strong public and private action to help the environment, fewer than one in 10 said they had seen such steps in the past year. Our leadership has been going in the wrong direction. Hopefully, Gore’s movement is turning the tide toward sensibility and responsibility.

In its citation, the Nobel committee said that Gore “has for a long time been one of the world’s leading environmentalist politicians” and cited his awareness at an early stage “of the climatic challenges the world is facing.

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.”
If you have not read or viewed An Inconvenient Truth, now is the time. What will be your legacy to the young people of the world?