Paramount Pictures

Al Gore, UN Panel Share Nobel for Peace

Former Vice President Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for his work to heighten public awareness on the growing crisis of global warming and climate change.

He shares the prize with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,

Gore's position in the Academy Award-winning film "An Inconvenient Truth," lies in sharp contrast to the postion of President George W. Bush, whose administration rejected the Kyoto treaty on climate change to the consternation of much of the world, where the U.S. has been sharply criticized for not taking global warming seriously enough.

"We face a true planetary emergency," Gore said in a statement. "The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

The Nobel committee chairman, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, said: "We would encourage all countries, including the big countries, to challenge, all of them, to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming. The bigger the powers, the better that they come in front of this."

Leading up to the award, there was much speculation that Gore might use the prize, if he won, to launch a campaign to take back the presidency of the U.S., a position that was taken from him in a controversial ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000.

But according to the Associated Press, at least, two Gore advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity "because they are not authorized to share his thinking," said the award will not make it any more likely that he will seek the presidency in 2008.

If anything, the Peace Prize makes the rough-and-tumble of a presidential race less appealing to Gore, they said, because now he has a huge, international platform to fight global warming and may not want to do anything to diminish it.

Gore plans to donate his half of the $1.5 million prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan nonprofit organization devoted to changing public opinion worldwide about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

In its citation, the committed lauded Gore's "strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."

Former President Jimmy Carter was the last American to win the prize in 2002.