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The Scotsman

Tue 11 Dec 2007

End war on Earth, says Gore as he picks up peace prize

by JOHN ARCHER

AL GORE, the climate-change campaigner, collected the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday and said it was time to make peace with the planet.

The former vice-president of the United States shared the 2007 prize with the United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change.

"Without realising it, we have begun to wage war on the Earth itself," Mr Gore said at Oslo's City Hall.

"It is time to make peace with the planet. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed."

"The Earth has a fever, and the fever is rising", he said, adding that the world pumps out 70 million tonnes of global-warming pollution every day.

He added that, instead of the "nuclear winter" predicted a few decades ago, the planet now faces a "carbon summer".

Mr Gore, for whom the Nobel prize marked a dramatic comeback from defeat in the 2000 presidential election, said earlier generations had the courage to save civilisation when leaders found the right words in the 11th hour. He added: "Once again, it is the 11th hour. We must mobilise our civilisation with the urgency and resolve previously been seen only when nations mobilised for war."

Mr Gore is the second man from the tiny town of Carthage, to win the peace prize. The first was US secretary of state Cordell Hull in 1945.