First Jimmy Carter. Now possibly Al Gore.
Former US vice president Al Gore is seen as a possible winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to save the planet from global warming, the head of the Oslo Peace Research Institute has said.
“The issue of global warming is also very topical and … it wouldn’t be impossible for the Nobel committee to honour a person combatting this threat. In such case, Al Gore … seems to me to be a possible candidate,” the institute’s head, Stein Toennesson told AFP Thursday.
Emails, faxes and letters have been flowing in to the Nobel Institute in Oslo ahead of the February 1 deadline for nominations, with Finnish peace broker Martti Ahtisaari and Chinese dissident Rebiya Kadeer also tipped as possible laureates.
Two Norwegian members of parliament have nominated Al Gore jointly with Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a Canadian who represents more than 150,000 fellow Inuits in the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and who has campaigned to draw attention to climate change in the Arctic.
The former US vice president is currently criss-crossing the globe with his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, a hard-hitting rallying cry against global environmental catastrophe.
“This is clearly some of the most import conflict prevention work that is being done. Climate change could lead to enormous waves of refugees, the likes of which the world has never seen before,” Heidi Soerensen, a Socialist Left MP who nominated Gore and Watt-Cloutier, told daily Aftenposten on Thursday.
“One hundred million climate refugees, major changes in drinking water supplies and a reduction in biological diversity … will rapidly become a major security threat,” co-nominator Boerge Brende, of the Conservative party, told the paper.
Toennesson said the Nobel committee might choose to honour the fight against climate change.
To the Nobel committee: if you really want to make a statement, how about choosing to honor the fight against Islamofascism.
