Word: prized
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...Nobel Committee has done its part, awarding Gore the Peace Prize for being "probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted" to combat climate change, according to his citation. (The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was also a joint winner of the prize.) And so, after the obligatory spasms of celebration and the equally obligatory gnashing of Rush Limbaugh's teeth, will Americans finally get to enjoy one of the great spectacles in political history, as Gore's ultimate honor levitates him beyond his leading...
...reach out. And, finally, he's happier now because he has been vindicated. The Nobel is an acknowledgment that Gore was right about the greatest global threat we face (and that this is the year when most everyone else finally figured out he was right). Winning the Peace Prize may not place Gore among the global saints, the Nelson Mandelas of the world; but it does place him among the laureates who are beloved in some quarters and loathed in others - those highly charged prizewinners like Jimmy Carter...
...That's not a bad place to be, but you won't find Gore gloating about it. This prize, after all, is a recognition that Gore has done more than anyone else (excepting Mother Nature) to bring about a sea change in public opinion. An overwhelming majority of Americans - 90% of Democrats, 80% of independents, 60% of Republicans - now say they favor "immediate action" to confront the climate crisis. Gore helped make that happen, but he can't take too much satisfaction in it. As he told me last spring, "Time is running out, and we still haven't done...
...change becomes unstoppable. For environmentalists, 2007 is likely to be remembered as the tipping point when public understanding of the existential threat of climate change reached critical mass. If that's true, no one will deserve more credit than Al Gore, who was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize today along with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Gore spoke about the threat of the greenhouse effect as a Senator in the 1980s, when it was just emerging from the thicket of scientific literature, and after losing the presidency in 2000 he crisscrossed the globe, laptop...
Gore's win was widely expected, but there may still be those who wonder how an environmentalist could be, as the Peace Prize's description goes, the person who has "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations." They shouldn't. Climate change is already a key instigator of conflict in areas like Darfur, where drought likely worsened by global warming helped trigger a civil war that has claimed over 200,000 lives. (Nor are Gore and the IPCC the first greens to win the Peace Prize; that would be the Kenyan Wangari Maathai, a conservationist...