Congatulations to Al Gore and the IPCC

Former Vice President Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body created to study the effects of climate change, won the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday. Congratulations to both. For anyone who hasn't been comatose or living in a cave the last few years, the reason for Gore's award is obvious:

The Nobel committee praised Gore as being "one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians."

"He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted," said Ole Danbolt Mjos, chairman of the Nobel committee.

Gore shares Nobel Peace Prize with U.N. panel

His film, An Inconvenient Truth, and its attendant publicity campaign, created an awareness of the situation among non-technical people. He's made carbon offsets a part of our vocabulary. His message is as much about what we can do as individuals as what our governments ought to do:

I'm under no illusions about how big an impact one person can make. But I do think that if all of us begin to make these changes, it adds up. And it begins to stimulate the emergence of a new marketplace, in which there is a business advantage in reaching out to consumers who want to be environmentally responsible.

Al Gore Interview: "It Is Not Too Late to Stop This Crisis"

The IPCC took a moment to remind us what this award is about, which is their efforts to raise our awareness:

In New Delhi, Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian scientist who leads the UN committee, said the award was "not something I would have thought of in my wildest dreams." In an interview in his office at the Energy and Resources Institute, Pachauri cast the award as a vindication of science over the skeptics on climate change.

"The message that it sends is that the Nobel Prize committee realized the value of knowledge in tackling the problem of climate change and the fact that the IPCC has an established record of producing knowledge and an impartial and objective assessment of climate change," he said.

Gore and UN panel are awarded Nobel Peace Prize

Of course, the International Herald Tribune felt the need to remind everyone that everything that other nations do is about making President Bush look bad:

Ole Danbolt Mjoes, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, addressed reporters after the award was announced and tried to dismiss repeated questions about whether the awards were a criticism - direct or indirect - of the Bush administration. He said the committee was making an appeal to the entire world to unite against the threat of global warming.
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In this decade the Nobel Peace Prize has been given to prominent people and agencies whose views on a range of issues differ with those of the Bush administration. They include the former American president Jimmy Carter, who won in 2002, and the United Nations nuclear monitoring agency as well as its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, in 2005.

Gore and UN panel are awarded Nobel Peace Prize

I'd like to remind the press in the U.S. and elsewhere that even in America we sometimes do things that are completely unrelated to making George W. Bush look like a fool. President Carter and Mohamed ElBaradei did some very worthwhile things to earn those prizes. How myopic do you have to be to think that everything is about W., because people just love to hate him dontcha know?

So, congratulations, Mr. Gore and the IPCC. You earned it, and if it ticks off our current President, thanks for that, too.