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Gore's Nobel Win Greeted With Cheers by Europeans
LONDON -- News of Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize was received with delight Monday across Europe, where President Bush is deeply unpopular, climate change is generally accepted as undisputed fact and the former vice president is widely seen as a welcome anti-Bush.
"He's the evidence that America is still capable of intelligent discourse," said Peter Kellner, who heads the British polling firm YouGov. According to Kellner, opinion polls show that British people generally admire America and Americans but strongly dislike Bush. He also said surveys routinely find that more than 80 percent of Britons agree with Gore that climate change exists and is man-made.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called Gore "inspirational," and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he hoped Gore's honor would encourage world leaders to "approach this challenge even more swiftly and decisively."
John Noach, 69, a Dutch citizen who was sitting in a London Starbucks on Friday, said that in Europe, "most reasonable people" think of Gore as "a lifeline to sanity."
Respect for environmentalism crosses political and social lines in Europe; the 27-country European Union views itself as the global leader in addressing such issues as warming and pollution. The choice of Gore for the honor, conferred by an independent committee appointed by the parliament of Norway, reflected mainstream thinking in Europe as a whole.
Last October, Gore's Academy Award-winning film "An Inconvenient Truth" was shown to about 200 members of the French parliament to "sensitize deputies and senators" to environmental issues, according to the then-president of the National Assembly, Jean-Louis Debre.
Le Monde newspaper called the screening a "triumph," and its columnist Dominique Dhombres hailed Gore as "the American hero of the fight against global warming."
After the award was announced Friday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy praised Gore as "an outstanding personality" and said that "today's fight against climate change is a determining factor for tomorrow's peace. . . . I'm very happy that such a great American used his position to set an example."
In Italy, Prime Minister Romano Prodi said Gore's selection underlined the need for "everyone to combat climate change," a statement echoed by other political leaders. But climate change is not a major political issue in Italy, and Gore's movie received only limited distribution there.
Gore's Nobel met with applause in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has sought for months with limited success to persuade the Bush administration to do more about climate change under the auspices of the United Nations and the Group of Eight major industrial powers.
"Like no other, Al Gore has for many years through his personal commitment contributed to heightening global awareness of the need to develop effective strategies to counter climate change," Merkel said Friday.
Some Germans were wistful that the peace prize didn't go to one of their own -- former chancellor Helmut Kohl, an architect of German unification, was rumored to be in the running.
At a conference on global warming this week in Potsdam, many scientists were openly rooting for Gore to win. The German government had invited 15 Nobel Prize laureates from a variety of disciplines to attend the event, including Rajendra K. Pachauri, the U.N. climate scientist whose panel shared the peace prize with Gore on Friday.
Gore has critics as well in Europe, including a man who filed a lawsuit in Britain objecting to the film, which is being sent to 3,500 schools in England and Wales. The judge in that case ruled this week that while the basic premise of the film was correct, Gore had made nine errors of scientific fact.
"I say, Al Gore should go for it, but get your facts right first," said Billy Dunworth, 41, a construction worker browsing in a London bookshop. "He's like Princess Diana and gives attention to good causes. But he must get his facts straight."
Michael White, a political columnist at the Guardian newspaper who has written widely on American politics, said he suspected Gore was more popular abroad than at home. In his view, the former vice president doesn't appeal to a minority of Britons who are "pathologically hostile to the United States." But he said Gore is popular among the much larger number "who want to think well of America."
"Al Gore is like Michael Moore for grown-ups," White said, citing the controversial maker of the film "Fahrenheit 9/11." "For better or worse, he's the kind of priggish American we approve of."
Correspondents John Ward Anderson in Paris and Craig Whitlock in Berlin contributed to this article. Special correspondents Karla Adam in London and Sarah Delaney in Italy also contributed.
© 2007 The Washington Post Company
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10 Comments so far
Show AllI'm glad that Mr. Gore's concerns are recognized and lauded, and I salute our European brothers and sisters for their appreciation of him -- en mass, you may hold him in higher esteem than many Americans do. But then, a prophet is never respected in his own country!
Now its time for our courageous Supreme Court to act again -- and sieze the Nobel Prize from Gore, & hand it to Bush.
I understand that Gore's win is good for bringing attention to gobal warming and all but.- Gore is a major proponent of nuclear power as a means to carbon reduction.
Bottom line, nuclear power is not a good alternative. It creates toxic, radioactive waste that you can't get rid of, so what happens when all that crap builds up? Who'll win the peace prize to bail us out of that one?
PS- Nuclear power is great at making one thing- raw materials for nuclear weaponry (depleted uranium shells, bombs, etc...) Seeing as how basically every new missile, artillery, and highh calibre bullet is being tipped with DU, maybe the arms industry has found a new (nobel prize winning) politician to climb in bed with.
I'd support nuclear power if there were some way to safely get rid of the radioactive waste.
It is remarkable that it took the recent documentary "Inconvenient Truth" to alert many to the impending dangers from global warming, which has been obvious to anyone who had made even minor efforts to be informed. The evidence linking carbon pollution to warming is as close to certain as science can be. Its causes, consequences, and mitigation requirements have been documented by many dedicated environmental organizations including The Union of Concerned Scientists, and chronicled in the press for years.
The dangerous manipulation of essential scientific data used by this administration to conceal and derail corrective measures for this threat and other vital environmental reforms has also been apparent. Contrary to their assertions, measures to reduce greenhouse gases could only improve our economy by lessening our trade deficits, and improving our security by reducing our dependance on foreign oil. We could also regain some of our lost world respect that has resulted from our opposition Kyoto while arrogantly contributing disproportionally to carbon pollution.
Often overlooked is the fact that the same measures needed to mitigate global warming would be necessary even if it were not an issue. Conservation, alternative energy development, anti- pollution refinements, etc are essential for other vital environmental reforms such as air and water quality, reductions in toxic waste generation, land preservation, etc.
The environmental and social damage from our indifference to carbon pollution and related environmental measures can only worsen if we allow these destructive environmental policies of this reckless and unlearned president to continue.
Two problems here:
'opinion polls show that British people generally admire America and Americans'
WHAT about america and americans do britons admire'? I find them appalling, in their failure toi see their country has ceased to be even a token democracy in which they can have any say.
'Michael White, a political columnist at the Guardian newspaper who has written widely on American politics, said he suspected Gore was more popular abroad than at home. In his view, the former vice president doesn't appeal to a minority of Britons who are "pathologically hostile to the United States." But he said Gore is popular among the much larger number "who want to think well of America."
This is risible. Is it now a disease to be hostile to a nation that has launched two invasions, and whose money is use to support apartheid israel? What White is saying is its wrong to hate america...not that he has defined what america is....'who want to think well of america'...its far to late for that.
So, WHAT IS MEANT BY 'AMERICA'? Surely not freedom and democracy!
Arise and Shine!
Is the 257 the number of misleading statements you've made to date or the address of your right-wing think tank?
Make the following your 258th lie:
"Gore is a major proponent of nuclear power as a means to carbon reduction."
Misleading people is a crappy way to make an impression here.
Published on Monday, May 7, 2007 by Toronto Star/Canada
Anti-Nuke Groups Gird for New Battle
by Tim Harper
"Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore has said he sees nuclear plants as a "small part" of the global warming strategy, but warned that they are so expensive, take so long to build and "only come in one size, extra large," that it can be only a small component of the battle plan."
Read the whole article from CommonDreams archives and then hang your head in shame! Major proponent MY ASS!
And met by boos here.
If there was ever any doubt that by sheer misfortune of birth, I am most assuredly on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
thewonderingyou
==There is no way to "safely" get rid of nuclear waste.==
I know.