It’s official: Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have won the Nobel Peace Prize “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 Nobel committee said. The former vice president was described as “probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted” to fight climate change. The IPCC is a collection of some 3,000 scientists from around the world who crank out authoritative reports detailing climate impacts and climate predictions for world leaders. The Nobel committee said of the panel, “Through the scientific reports it has issued over the past two decades, the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming.” The award marks only the second time the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to honor work in the environmental field; the first was Wangari Maathai‘s win in 2004.
