Gore said the price of inaction is rapidly melting glaciers, massive crop loss due to drought, the extinction of some species and the displacement of millions of people by flooding. He called on all nations to mobilize with "a sense of urgency and shared resolve that has previously been seen only when nations have mobilized for war."

So, Al Gore and a United Nations panel were jointly awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work fighting global warming, which the former vice president called "a true planetary emergency." The last American to win the prize was former President Jimmy Carter in 2002.

The former vice president said he was "deeply honored" by the award and it was "even more significant" that he was sharing it with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization which has worked for years on the issue of global warming.

In its citation, the Nobel committee said Gore's "strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."

The Nobel prize is a Peace Prize.

So, again, I ask, what exactly does global climate change have to do with world peace? I'll share with you what I've learned in my search for that answer...

"Climate change is and will be a significant threat to our national security and in a larger sense to life on Earth as we know it to be," retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan, former U.S. Army chief of staff, told a congressional panel last month. A 2003 report commissioned by the Pentagon made this warning about climate change:

"[Climate change] could potentially destabilize the geopolitical environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even war due to resource constraints."

For the Pentagon, the answer to all of these dangers would seem to be straightforward: arm to the teeth, prepare for greater threats than ever from thermonuclear war, and build an impregnable wall around the United States, closing the global masses out.

That 22-page report, An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, prepared for the Pentagon by Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, states in its executive summary:

As global and local carrying capacities are reduced, tensions could mount around the world, leading to two fundamental strategies: defensive and offensive. Nations with the resources to do so may build virtual fortresses around their countries, preserving resources for themselves. Less fortunate nations especially those with ancient enmities with their neighbors, may initiate in struggles for access to food, clean water, or energy. Unlikely alliances could be formed as defense priorities shift and the goal is resources for survival rather than religion, ideology, or national honor.

Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Vice-Chair of IPCC Working Group II, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-sponsored network of scientists, included these statements in a May 2007 speech:

Without mitigation [of the current trend of man-made climate change], some of the projected impacts include:

• Increasing annual average runoff and water availability at high latitudes and in some wet tropical areas, and decrease over some dry regions at mid-latitudes and in the dry tropics.
• Drought affected areas will likely increase in extent. In Africa alone, by 2020, between 75 and 250 million people are projected to be exposed to an increase of water stress due to climate change. Water security problems are also projected to intensify by 2030 in southern and eastern Australia.
• In the course of the century, water supplies stored in glaciers and snow cover are projected to decline, reducing water availability in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (such as the Himalayas in Asia or the Andes in Latin America). In North America, the decreased snowpack in western mountains is projected to cause more winter flooding, and reduced summer flows, exacerbating competition for over-allocated water resources.
• Freshwater availability in Central, South, East and Southeast Asia; particularly in large river basins, is projected to decrease due to climate change, which could, in combination with other factors adversely affect more than a billion people by the 2050s.
• In Southern Europe, climate change is projected to worsen extreme heat and drought in a region already vulnerable to climate variability, reducing water supplies, hydropower potential, summer tourism, and crop productivity.
• Coasts are projected to be exposed to increasing risks, including coastal erosion, due to climate change and sea-level rise. Many million more people are projected to be flooded every year due to sea-level rise by the 2080s. The numbers affected will be largest in the megadeltas of Asia and Africa while small islands are especially vulnerable.
• After the 21st century, very large sea-level rises (we are talking about 4-6 metres or more, that is 13 to 20 feet or more) that would result from widespread deglaciation of Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets imply major changes in coastlines and ecosystems, and inundation of low-lying areas, with greatest effects in river deltas. Relocating populations, economic activity, and infrastructure would be costly and challenging.

The world's poor are first and hardest hit by the consequences of climate change. Many countries have already experienced deadly droughts and floods. And climate-induced natural disasters have displaced hundreds of thousands of people across the world, while global fresh water resources become increasingly scarce.

As impoverished populations grow increasingly impoverished and migrate to areas perceived as having more water, more food or more protection from the elements - competition for these same resources will inevitably intensify. Competition for resources leads to war. We know this. It's true today. It's true throughout history.

War and violence might be inevitable and could exponentially increase the damage of climate change because of the enormous stresses to be experienced by whole populations of people. People will see changes in food production, weather, water supplies and health.

Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" informs us that when people are faced with loss of food, water or shelter - nothing else matters much.

So, what does global warming have to do with global peace?

The two are inextricably linked.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee agrees. In awarding the prize Friday to climate campaigner Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the Norwegian committee said the stresses of a changing global environment may heighten the "danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states." The Nobel Committee's announcement regarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.

Indications of changes in the earth's future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth's resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.

Through the scientific reports it has issued over the past two decades, the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming. Thousands of scientists and officials from over one hundred countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming. Whereas in the 1980s global warming seemed to be merely an interesting hypothesis, the 1990s produced firmer evidence in its support. In the last few years, the connections have become even clearer and the consequences still more apparent.

Al Gore has for a long time been one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians. He became aware at an early stage of the climatic challenges the world is facing. His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.

By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world's future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man's control. (The Norwegian Nobel Committee, Oslo, 12 October 2007)

Gore said he planned to donate his half of the $1.5 million Nobel Peace prize to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan nonprofit group. Gore is chairman of the alliance's board.

So what about the organization that Gore is giving half of his money to?

The organization's mission is to persuade the American people - and people elsewhere in the world - of the importance and urgency of adopting and implementing effective and comprehensive solutions for the climate crisis.

Therefore, its greatest focus is on the dissemination of information and the planning of media tools and events. Evidently, it is undertaking an unprecedented mass persuasion exercise. The Alliance for Climate Protection describes their organizational goals:

The Alliance will persuade people of the importance, urgency and feasibility of adopting and implementing effective and comprehensive solutions for the climate crisis.

We established the Alliance for Climate Protection as a new single-purpose organization to persuade people of the importance, urgency and feasibility of adopting and implementing effective and comprehensive solutions for the climate crisis. Our efforts will include:

1. Moving the USA past a 'tipping point', beyond which the majority of leaders in both major political parties and all sectors of civil society compete to offer genuinely effective proposals, policies, programs and laws that will sharply reduce emissions of CO2, methane and other greenhouse gas pollutants.
2. Creating a critical mass of public opinion in support of active US participation in the international effort to enact a genuinely effective new treaty to reduce global greenhouse gas pollution.
3. Generating overwhelming support - within the US and around the globe - for new American leadership in the international efforts to solve the climate crisis.
4. Persuading individuals, families, communities, states, corporations and other organizations to begin to quickly and meaningfully reduce their own global warming pollution -- and to offset the remainder - in order to become 'carbon neutral.'

Not interested in institutional longevity for its own sake, we expect that once these objectives have been met, other established organizations can carry on the work as necessary and that the Alliance will no longer need to exist as a stand-alone entity.

The Alliance website say that it is committed to working collaboratively with an extensive cross-section of groups to advance our shared objectives, saying, "We will build alliances with Americans from all walks of life." Interested in aligning yourself? Take the Alliance for Climate Protection pledge:

1. To demand that my country join an international treaty within the next 2 years that cuts global warming pollution by 90% in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth.
2. To take personal action to help solve the climate crisis by reducing my own CO2 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become "carbon neutral".
3. To fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2.
4. To work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation.
5. To fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal.
6. To plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests.
7. To buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century.

If you want to take this pledge yourself, you can do that here.

In many ways, Gore has had a deeper, more passionate voice, outside of politics than he did when he was either in the Senate, the White House, or the campaign trail.

He's going to be a voice, no matter what. For example, I love his most recent book . I'm inspired by the honesty as he gives me hope that he will continue to serve as conscience and ramrod no matter what position he holds:

"I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled 'marketplace of ideas' now functions." Al Gore, in his 2007 book, The Assault on Reason

If you want even more rebel rousing inspiration, quintessential Gore, check out these words by Al Gore. That speech gives us Al Gore's characteristic honesty, anger and forthrightness - probably some of the same qualities that got the Nobel committee's attention.

We've spent so many years under the depressing and oppressive shadow of George Bush. Bush has been scorned and ridiculed by many of the world's political leaders and scientists. By association, we have absorbed some of that scorn and ridicule.

I'm just so happy Al Gore is talking to us about our constitutional rights, the value of improved international relations and about the importance of civic and grassroots engagement.

For his part, Al Gore has done much to renew our pride, our hope and our respect around the world.

I'm glad that he is putting climate change in the world spotlight.

His admonitions and calls to action may, in fact, help us to save ourselves.

(Graphic Credits: The beginning graphic of Al Gore is original art by Nashville artist J. William Myers. Myers created the art as a fund-raiser for the Draft Gore organization, which sells the posters. These are available exclusively through Draft Gore.)