WRI Congratulates Board Member Al Gore and the IPCC on Winning 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

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Former Vice President and WRI board member Al Gore wins the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to build and disseminate knowledge and awareness about climate change. WRI Board Member José Sarukhan and Climate Program Director Jonathan Pershing are contributors to the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report team.

Former Vice President and WRI Board member Al Gore was selected today as the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize recipient by a five-member Norwegian committee that chose from among 181 candidates. “What Al has done in the last two years has helped change the tide of history on the defining issue of our time,” said Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute (WRI).

Mr. Gore, who has served on WRI’s Board of Directors since 2005, spoke earlier this year at the Institute’s 25th anniversary dinner in New York City about how global warming challenges our “moral imagination,” just as the civil rights issue first did a generation ago.

Thirty years ago, Congressman Al Gore organized the first congressional hearings on global warming, before most people had ever heard of climate change. As Vice President of the United States, Al Gore helped usher in the longest peacetime economic expansion in American history, and led the Clinton Administration’s efforts to protect the environment. He authored a best selling book on the topic, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (1992).

Gore’s book and Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, are widely credited with heightening public awareness about the scientific evidence about global warming, with no small credit to the Vice President’s personal grassroots campaign that has inspired audiences and motivated thousands of advocates to further spread the word.

The prize is named after Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel and recognizes efforts to foster human rights or democracy, to eliminate poverty, or to share resources and protect the environment. It was announced in Oslo, and the formal ceremonies will be held December 10.