EDITORIAL: ... Gore's Footprint

Oct 13, 05:42 AM

Current Headlines: By The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Oct. 13--Former Vice President Al Gore is now a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, sharing the award with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The U.N. group has raised awareness of the threat of global warming, bringing together a multitude of scientists and generating worldwide concern and interest in what could become a grave crisis.

Gore, who has written books and appeared in his own Academy Award-winning film on the subject, is deserving. He has used his high profile and his eloquence to sound alarms that needed to be heard. Along the way, he's taken the barbs of his critics and kept up the fight and the faith. Thanks in large part to him, the subject of climate change and its threat to humanity is now locked on the public radar.

That is a profound contribution which cannot be overestimated. Gore's efforts amount to a patriotic crusade, a worldwide cause. Some naysayers are already appearing, of course, calling the award political. But Gore's sincerity looks genuine. His advisers, in fact, say that despite the fact that he would draw support in another run for the presidency, he is unlikely to do so because he does not wish to lessen the impact of what he's trying to do for the environment. And he will donate his half of the $1.5 million prize to an environmental group.

The fact that Gore was a politician, that he ran for the White House against George W. Bush, who has become an unpopular incumbent burdened by an ill-conceived war and a woeful record on domestic policy, should not taint Gore's spectacular efforts to preserve this planet for generations to come. The Nobel Prize is a high honor. Al Gore earned it.

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