Climate Change A “Nobel” Cause

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore, Jr. receive 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced today that they are awarding the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Jr. “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.”

The IPCC, a working group of the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization, released a report earlier this year, which reflects the growing international consensus that the earth's climate is being changed by anthropogenic greenhouse gasses. Gore has been working on climate change issues for years. His efforts were recognized earlier this year when “An Inconvenient Truth,” the film based on his climate change presentation, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto , a forthcoming book edited by former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, brings together some of the best-known and respected authorities in climate policy who provide a comprehensive agenda for global collective action. Among them are R.K. Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, and John Stone, a member of the IPCC Working Group II. Together with the other authors, they call for a multilateral approach that goes beyond the mitigation-focused Kyoto policies, balancing them with strategies for adaptation. Authoritative, insightful, and even-handed, this book gives a new impetus to the increasingly important global climate policy debate. Brookings is copublishing this book with the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

- Read the Nobel Committee’s 2007 Peace Prize announcement.

- Learn more about Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto.

Related resources:

- Learn about Statehouse and Greenhouse: The Emerging Politics of American Climate Change Policy.

- Learn about Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment.