09.12.2007
European Green
Party congratulate Al Gore and IPCC on the occasion of Nobel Peace Prize
Presentation
The Spokespersons of the European Green Party today congratulated Al Gore and the representatives of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for winning this year’s Nobel peace prize, ahead of the official presentation of the prize which will take place in Oslo, Norway, on Monday 10th December.
EGP Co-Spokesperson Ulrike Lunacek said:” This is an extremely well deserved award as both Al Gore, with his incredibly successful film “An Inconvenient Truth”, and the IPCC, with their groundbreaking reports on the scientific evidence and likely effects of Climate Change, have played a vital role in raising public awareness of Climate Change and its impact. Perhaps even more importantly, they have proved the scientific case for the existence of climate change and the fact that it has been caused primarily by human behaviour so that politicians and governments can no longer avoid the responsibility they have to address the issue with real action. As I said on the day the award was announced in October, this is a real wake up call for governments and what the world expects of its leaders now are deeds, not words.”
EGP Co-Spokesperson Philippe Lamberts continued:” The presentation of the award on 10th December is extremely timely as it falls halfway through the UN Talks on Climate Change in Bali, where the world’s leaders are meeting to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. It is vitally important that those world leaders meeting in Bali take on board the clear message of the IPCC, Al Gore and by extension, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. That message is that Climate Change is real, will cause catastrophic and irreversible damage to the planet and its people and this can only be averted by political commitments and binding targets. This message was reinforced yet again by the tens of thousands of people worldwide who took part in protests as part of December 8th’s Day of International Action on Climate Change. It is particularly significant that Al Gore and the IPCC are being presented with the Nobel Peace Prize, as it is too often forgotten that Climate Change poses and will continue to pose a major threat to the peace and collective security of the world’s population, particularly the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. It is now up to those politicians meeting in Bali this week to agree to the commitments that will really make a difference in the fight against Climate Change.”