You are here

Environmental policy and climate change

16 December, 2015 - 15:14

The 2007 recipients for the Nobel Peace Prize were the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Al Gore, former vice president of the United States. The Nobel committee cited the winners “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 counteractsuch change.” While Al Gore is best known for his efforts to bring awareness of climate change to the world, through his book and associated movie (An Inconvenient Truth), the IPCC is composed of a large, international group of scientists that has worked for many years in developing a greater understanding of the role of human activity in global warming. Reports on the extent and causes of the externality that we call global warming are now plentiful. The IPCC has produced several reports at this point; a major study was undertaken in the UK under the leadership of formerWorld Bank Chief Economist Sir Nicholas Stern. Countless scientific papers have been published on the subject.