A prominent environmental activist, Gore was awarded the 2007 Nobel
Peace Prize (together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
for the "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about
man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that
are needed to counteract such change." He also starred in the Academy
Award - winning documentary on the topic of global warming, An
Inconvenient Truth. In 2007, Gore helped to organize the July 7
benefit concert for global warming, Live Earth.
According to
The Concord Monitor, Gore "was one of the first politicians to
grasp the seriousness of climate change and to call for a reduction in
emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases. He held the first
congressional hearings on the subject in the late 1970s." During his
tenure in Congress, Gore co-sponsored hearings on toxic waste in 1978–79,
and hearings on global warming in the 1980s. In 1989, while still a
Senator, Gore published an editorial in the
Washington Post, in which he argued, "Humankind has suddenly
entered into a brand new relationship with the planet Earth. The world's
forests are being destroyed; an enormous hole is opening in the ozone
layer. Living species are dying at an unprecedented rate. In 1990, Senator
Gore presided over a three - day conference with legislators from over 42
countries which sought to create a Global Marshall Plan, "under
which industrial nations would help less developed countries grow
economically while still protecting the environment." Gore also wrote
Earth in the Balance (which was published in 1992) while his
six-year-old son Albert was recovering from a serious accident. It became
the first book written by a sitting Senator to make The New York
Times bestseller list since John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage.
As Vice-President, Gore was involved in a number of initiatives related
to the environment. He launched the
GLOBE program on Earth
Day 1994, an education and science activity that, according to
Forbes magazine, "made extensive use of the Internet to increase
student awareness of their environment". In the late 1990s, Gore strongly
pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Protocol, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas
emissions. He was opposed by the Senate, which passed unanimously (95-0)
the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the
Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any
protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for
developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious
harm to the economy of the United States" On November 12, 1998, Gore
symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman
indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until
there was participation by the developing nations. The Clinton
Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for
ratification. In 1998, Gore began promoting a NASA satellite that would
provide a constant view of Earth, marking the first time such an image
would have been made since The Blue Marble photo from the 1972 Apollo 17
mission. The "Triana" satellite would have been permanently mounted in the
L1 Lagrangian Point, 1.5 million km away. During this time, he
also became associated with Digital Earth.
In 2004, Gore launched
Generation Investment Management. This firm, which he chairs, seeks
out companies which take a responsible view on global issues such as
climate
change. It was created to assist the growing demand for an investment
style that can bring returns by blending traditional equity research with
a focus on more intangible non-financial factors such as social and
environmental responsibility and corporate governance.
In recent years, Gore has remained busy traveling the world speaking
and participating in events mainly aimed towards
global
warming awareness and prevention. His keynote presentation on global
warming has received standing ovations, and he has presented it at least
1,000 times according to his monologue in An Inconvenient Truth.
His speaking fee is $100,000. Gore is a vocal proponent of carbon
neutrality, buying a carbon offset each time he travels by aircraft. Gore
and his family drive
hybrid vehicles. In "An Inconvenient Truth" Gore calls for people to
conserve energy.
In 2007, Al Gore was the main non-official representative for the
United States in the
United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, which is a series of
discussions that plans to continue where the
Kyoto Protocol
left off when it expires in 2012. He used a famous World War II Poem
written by Pastor Martin Niemöller to describe how the international
community is eerily accomplishing nothing in the face of the greatest
crisis in human history. He ended the speech using his famous tag line:
"However, political will is a renewable resource."
During Global Warming Awareness Month, on February 9, 2007, Al Gore and
Richard Branson announced the
Virgin Earth Challenge, a competition offering a $25 million prize
for the first person or organization to produce a viable design that
results in the removal of atmospheric
greenhouse gases.
Gore starred in the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth,
released on May 24, 2006. The film documents the evidence for
anthropogenic global warming and warns of the consequences of people not
making immediate changes to their behavior. It is the
fourth-highest-grossing documentary in U.S. history.
After An Inconvenient Truth was nominated and won the 2007
Academy Award for documentary feature. Gore also published a book of the
same title, which became a bestseller. In reference to the use of nuclear
power to mitigate global warming, Gore has stated, "Nuclear energy is not
the panacea for tackling global warming."
Al Gore was awarded the 2007
Nobel Peace Prize, which was shared by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, headed by
Rajendra K. Pachauri.
The award was given on October 12, 2007:
"for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater
knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for
the measures that are needed to counteract such change"
Al Gore and Pachauri accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 in Oslo,
Norway on December 10, 2007.
On 22 April 2008 (Earth Day), Gore will release his new book, The
Path to Survival. A sequel to
An Inconvenient Truth, the book has been described by its
publisher as explaining, "how making bold choices now to protect our
environment will also create new jobs, propel sustainable economic
improvements, and inspire a new generation to tackle our most challenging
issues with moral leadership."
Al Gore is currently chairman of the Emmy Award - winning American
television channel Current TV, chairman of Generation Investment
Management, a director on the board of Apple Inc., an unofficial advisor
to Google's senior management, chairman of the Alliance for Climate
Protection, and a partner in the venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers, heading that firm's climate change solutions group.
(Sources:
Wikipedia;
Nobel Prize website)
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