Nobel Peace Prize for climate change advocates

Posted on behalf of the Google.org team by David Bercovich, Product Marketing Manager, Google, Michael Terrell, Team Member, Google.org, and Adam Borelli, Team Coordinator, Google.org

Last week the Nobel Foundation awarded Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the Nobel Peace Prize. Former U. S. Vice President Al Gore was honored for his work on climate change and his Oscar winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. The IPCC, a joint project of the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization, was honored for its efforts over the past two decades to educate the world about climate change. Earlier this year, the IPCC issued its strongest statement to date, finding the evidence of climate change "unequivocal" and concluding with 90% certainty that humans are the cause.

In awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to leaders in the battle against climate change, the Norwegian Nobel Committee emphasizes that the problem's effects go beyond climate, and extend to individual security and opportunity. In the award press release they state:

"Indications of changes in the earth's future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth's resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states...the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control."

Al Gore has argued for rising to meet the challenge of climate change from a moral perspective: "The climate crisis offers us the chance to experience what few generations in history have had the privilege of experiencing: a generational mission; a compelling moral purpose; a shared cause; and the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict of politics and to embrace a genuine moral and spiritual challenge."

We agree wholeheartedly, and congratulate Al Gore and the IPCC on this historic recognition!