NORWAY:Climate campaigner Al Gore collected the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday and said it was time to make peace with the planet.
The former US vice-president shared the 2007 prize with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change whose head, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, spoke of the need to heed the wisdom of science.
"Without realising it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. It is time to make peace with the planet. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed," Mr Gore said at Oslo's City Hall to the applause of about 1,000 guests, including Norway's King Harald and Queen Sonja.
"The earth has a fever. And the fever is rising," he said, adding that every day the world pumps out 70 million tonnes of global-warming pollution - mainly carbon dioxide. Instead of the "nuclear winter" scientists warned of a few decades ago, the planet now faces a "carbon summer".
He said earlier generations had the courage to save civilisation when leaders found the right words at the 11th hour. "Once again it is the 11th hour," said Mr Gore, who has said he will give his part of the $1.5 million (€1 million) prize to climate work.
Mr Gore said he was deeply moved to be the second man from the tiny town of Carthage, Tennessee, to win the peace prize. The first was former US secretary of state Cordell Hull in 1945 for his role in fostering the United Nations. Mr Gore added that saving the global environment must become "the central organising principle of the world community".
Dr Pachauri warned that the impact of climate change on the world's poorest people could prove "extremely unsettling". He said warming could lead to widespread extinctions of species and that a sharp rise in temperatures would be "disastrous".
Dr Pachauri said the world's attention was on the UN climate summit in Bali, and asked: "Will those responsible for decisions in the field of climate change at the global level listen to the voice of science and knowledge, which is now loud and clear?"
The laureates will go to Bali from Norway. Mr Gore said he would call for the adoption of a bold mandate for a treaty that puts a universal global cap on emissions and that uses emissions trading to bring about speedy reductions.