With Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change jointly winning the Nobel Peace Prize today, recognizing the efforts of Mr. Gore and the entire IPCC “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,” I thought it might be a great time to thank all of you, who, while without a Nobel Prize (or even without recognition by Thomas Friedman) are in your own ways doing the same — sharing information and solutions, and not only laying foundations for change, but making that change happen.
Today, we had an equal celebration here in New Delhi, celebrating the half of the award given to the IPCC accepted by Chairman Dr. R K Pachauri, who is also the Executive Director of The Energy and Resources Institute, an organization that is working on climate change adaptation and mitigation here in India and globally. What I found myself celebrating, was what the Nobel Peace Prize mentions in its announcement, that the IPCC has brought together thousands of scientists in more than 100 countries to jointly address climate change and communicate the certainty of anthropogenic climate change. It is this kind of international cooperation and communication that needs to be part of our solutions – both for mitigating climate change and finding peaceful solutions to adapting to it.
The NY Times quotes the Chairman of the Nobel Committee as saying, “We would encourage all countries, including the big countries, to challenge all of them to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming,” he said. “The bigger the powers, the better that they come in front of this.” While, An Inconvenient Truth woke up many Americans to the science of climate change and to some of the solutions to it, but it is up to our generation – around the world – to make those solutions become reality. I have been so excited to be working at TERI, RK Pachauri’s organization, to be exposed to the young people here who are coming up with efficient alternative energy solutions for India’s rapidly growing energy demand. Daily, I find myself asked what the United States is doing about climate change, both nationally and in our cities and universities, and what Americans really think about climate change. Here, as everywhere I’ve answered that question, I say that I have immense hope that our generation and our nation will be able to Step It Up — we recognize there’s no time to waste and that the future of our planet, along with our planet’s peace, are at stake. On November 3rd, as all the days before and after, I hope we will be able to continue to increase communication about climate change, on our campuses, in our communities, and all across our beautiful planet.
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