Gore Ranks as Most Effective Advocate for Curbing Global Warming

Former vice president Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize win today meant the same thing to both his supporters and detractors: He now ranks as the world's most effective public advocate for curbing global warming.

While an array of activists, politicians and business leaders have all called in recent years for more stringent limits on greenhouse gases linked to climate change, no one has reshaped the public perception of what was once a wonkish scientific debate more than Gore. Through his tireless travel and slide show presentations, captured on screen in the 2006 film "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore has inserted himself into the policy debate both at home and in countries across the globe.

"It's difficult for Americans to comprehend how Gore is one of the most influential global leaders of our time," said Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, who met Gore more than two decades ago in Washington. "He is influential not only for his views, but for how he is mobilizing action and awareness in all countries, on all continents."

In many ways, the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision to award the peace prize to Gore -- along with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- underscores an emerging political and scientific consensus on the need to make more dramatic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions generated by human activity.

The award establishes that "climate change is the most challenging of all environmental problems that threaten peace and prosperity," said John Holdren, a Harvard University climate scientist who chairs the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "It's a recognition that he has done more as an individual, and the IPCC has done more than any organization, to bring the reality and the urgency of that danger to the rest of the world."

Gore has worked on the question of climate change for three decades; Holdren recalled getting calls in the middle of the night during the Clinton administration because the vice president would quiz his staff at all hours about the nuances of scientific articles on the subject. But it was the documentary featuring his climate change slide show that cemented his place in the public consciousness. When Hollywood producer and environmentalist Laurie David first proposed making the documentary in 2004, she said, Gore was skeptical that people would want to watch it.

"That was the hardest part, to convince him to make the movie," David said. While she initially had to beg friends in Los Angeles and New York to attend Gore's climate lecture, she remained confident his message would resonate with the public, she said. "Not for a second did I doubt the film would have an enormous impact." .....