Nobel. Al Gore.

"The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today to Al Gore, the former vice president, and to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for its work to alert the world to the threat of global warming." In the New York Times, Walter Gibbs has the story, while Jim Rutenberg has the immediate commentary, calling the Prize "the latest twist in a remarkable decade of soaring highs and painful lows... Even before Mr Gore won an Emmy for his so-called 'user generated' cable television network, Current, or an Oscar for his film on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, he was growing in stature for another reason: his early opposition to the Iraq war."

Updated through 10/13.

The Guardian has video on a page riddled with related linkage. Earlier in the day, Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, commented in the paper on the recent decision "by a high court judge in a case about a government plan to show [An Inconvenient Truth] in schools. He said the film contained nine scientific errors - but still ruled that pupils could see it.... But the case serves to illustrate how science and politics collide on climate change: so long as the political debate demands absolute scientific certainty as a prelude to serious action, a tiny seed of doubt on any issue - a single lake or mountain among 10,000 - can be used by the denial lobby to cast doubt on the entire global warming thesis, and so undermine public understanding."

Update: "One of the best things for Al Gore about winning the Nobel Peace Prize is that the sound bites are finally all on his side," writes John Dickerson at Slate. "For decades the two-term vice president has been championing environmental causes to public scorn and derision. Now he's been rewarded with one of the most coveted prizes on the planet.... Gore will have to face the toughest test of political instinct.... What makes Gore such a powerful force in Democratic politics is that he is also emblematic of an entire set of arguments. For many, his rise is a natural rebuke of the current president, but it's also become a rebuke of the perverted political process in which style is rewarded over substance. This is an argument that Gore expands on and applies to policy in his recent book The Assault on Reason." Still, he very well may not run, despite the likes of Christopher Hitchens arguing a couple of weeks ago that he would have to if he scored this Prize. Dickerson: "He is, by all accounts, happy. He's got a great life full of comfort and a stack of opportunities to do good while enjoying the comforts of fame and international renown. 'He is now on a different path,' his former top strategist Carter Eskew is fond of saying."

Via Bookforum, "the Snopes.com search of Al Gore urban legends."

"Al Gore has arrived at the point that most politicians can only imagine in their wildest dreams," blogs John Nichols for the Nation. "The entire world is asking him to be not merely a candidate but an ecological - not to mention, ideological - savior. And there is simply no question that he is viable. In fact, he is more viable than he has ever been. Can Gore resist? Probably. Should he resist? Probably not."

Updates, 10/13: "One can generate a lot of heartburn thinking about all of the things that would be better about this country and the world if the Supreme Court had done the right thing and ruled for Al Gore instead of George W Bush in 2000," sighs the New York Times. 'Strue, though. "What the citation didn't mention but needs to be said is that it shouldn't have to be left to a private citizen - even one so well known as Mr Gore - or a panel of scientists to raise that alarm or prove what is now clearly an undeniable link or champion solutions to a problem that endangers the entire planet. That should be, and must be the job of governments. And governments - above all the Bush administration - have failed miserably."

Also in the NYT, Bob Herbert: "The first thing media types wanted to know was whether this would prompt Mr Gore to elbow his way into the presidential campaign. That's like asking someone who's recovered from a heart attack if he plans to resume smoking.... Al Gore is a serious man confronted by a political system that is not open to a serious exploration of important, complex issues. He knows it. 'What politics has become,' he said, with a laugh and a tinge of regret, 'requires a level of tolerance for triviality and artifice and nonsense that I have found in short supply.'"

"There was a widespread view in liberal circles on both sides of the Atlantic in early 2000 that Gore was just a bore," writes Martin Kettle in the Guardian. "Those who belittled Gore then are rooting for him now. But to build Gore up in 2008 is as self-indulgent as it was to knock him down in 2000."

Blogging for the Atlantic, James Fallows draws on history to make a point about how Gore may be viewed in the future.

"[W]hen news came Friday that Hollywood's favorite environmentalist, former Vice President Al Gore, had won the world's most prestigious prize, members of the entertainment industry not only felt that the honor had been bestowed on one of their own, they also shared in celebrating his victory." No, really. Tina Daunt and John Horn report in the Los Angeles Times.

Susan Gerhard writes up a shortlist of environmental filmmakers SF360 has profiled.

Online listening tip. Gore on Fresh Air in May 2006.

Posted by dwhudson at October 12, 2007 7:06 AM