Al Gore: Vice-President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner
By Jason Sibert
Fourteen years ago, former Vice-President Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the issue of climate change.
In 2007, Gore shared the prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The former vice-president addressed the issue of climate change for several years before his Nobel Prize. When he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, he made the issue a part of his campaign. In his first run for president, he also touted his arms control credentials, as Gore had a lifelong interest in arms control. In the same year he won the Nobel Prize, Gore won an Academy Award or best documentary for his climate change documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Gore, the son of a U.S. senator, Albert Gore Snr., graduated from Harvard in 1969 and served in the Army in the Vietnam period from 1969 to 1971. He worked as a reporter for The Tennessean from 1971 to 1974. In 1974, he took a leave of absence from reporting and attended law school. He quit law school to enter politics, being elected to the House of Representatives in 1976. Gore served in the House from 1977 until 1984, being elected to the United States Senate in 1984. Tennessee voters reelected him to the Senate in 1990, and Bill Clinton tapped him as his vice-presidential running mate in 1992. He served as vice-president from 1993 to 2001. The Democratic Party gave him the nod for presidential nominee in 2000, as he lost to George W. Bush.
The former vice-president dedicated most of his time to the issue of climate change since leaving public life. His life does teach the American body politic certain lessons. Gore spent his years in politics mastering the discipline of arms control. President Joe Biden just signed an extension of the New START Treaty. Former President Donald Trump abandoned arms control treaties like the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Open Skies Treaty, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and created much international turmoil.
The issue of climate change grabs headlines today, and President Biden promised to act on the issue. The Defense Department counts climate change as one of the top security threats our country faces. Climate change means struggles for water in certain parts of the world. Our country might have to intervene militarily in these struggles which means more military spending. It would make sense for us to manage the climate issue through adaption and investment in low and no carbon energy now than to rely on the use of the military later.
Pandemics, like Covid-19, are a similar in that they don’t require a military response. The weapons used to fight pandemics aren’t military arsenals.
Jason Sibert is Executive Director of the Peace Economy Project.
