Kautzman’s AP GO PO Blog

Ex-VP, intergovernmental body jointly honored for global warming work

MSNBC staff and news service reports

Updated: 5:57 a.m. PT Oct 12, 2007

function UpdateTimeStamp(pdt) { var n = document.getElementById(”udtD”); if(pdt != ” && n && window.DateTime) { var dt = new DateTime(); pdt = dt.T2D(pdt); if(dt.GetTZ(pdt)) {n.innerHTML = dt.D2S(pdt,((’false’.toLowerCase()==’false’)?false:true));} } } UpdateTimeStamp(’633277906442570000′);

OSLO, Norway – Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting it.

“I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize,” Gore said in a statement. “We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

Gore won an Academy Award this year for his film “An Inconvenient Truth,” a documentary on global warming, and had been widely expected to win the prize.

“His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change,” the citation said. “He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.”

It cited Gore’s awareness at an early stage “of the climatic challenges the world is facing.”

Panel’s two decades
The committee also cited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for two decades of scientific reports that have “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming.”

The IPCC groups 2,500 researchers from more than 130 nations and issued reports this year blaming human activities for climate changes ranging from more heat waves to floods. It was set up in 1988 by the United Nations to help guide governments.

Climate change has moved high on the international agenda this year. The U.N. climate panel has been releasing reports, talks on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate are set to resume and on Europe’s northern fringe, where the awards committee works, there is growing concern about the melting Arctic.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said global warming “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.”

Gore said he would donate his share of the $1.5 million that accompanies the prize to the non-profit Alliance for Climate Protection.

Ole Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the prize committee, said the award should not be seen as singling out the Bush administration for criticism.

“A peace prize is never a criticism of anything. A peace prize is a positive message and support to all those champions of peace in the world.”

President Bush abandoned the Kyoto Protocol because he said it would harm the U.S. economy and because it did not require immediate cuts by countries like China and India. The treaty aimed to put the biggest burden on the richest nations that contributed the most carbon emissions.

The U.S. Senate voted against mandatory carbon reductions before the Kyoto negotiations were completed. The treaty was never presented to the Senate for ratification by the Clinton administration.

“Al Gore has fought the environment battle even as vice president,” Mjoes said. “Many did not listen … but he carried on.”

Fans and foes
Reaction to the award was immediate.

“He’s like the proverbial nut that grew into a giant oak by standing his ground,” Patrick Michaels, a scholar with the free market Cato Institute, said in a statement. “We can only hope that he can parlay his prize into a run for the U. S. presidency, where he will be unable to hide from debate on his extreme and one-sided view of global warming.”

British bookmakers once put 100-to-1 odds on Gore winning an Oscar, becoming a Nobel laureate and becoming president. He has now accomplished two of the three, and on Friday bookies slashed the odds to 8/1 from 10/1.

Gore, 59, has been coy, saying repeatedly he’s not running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, without ever closing that door completely.

FoxNews.com columnist Steve Milloy alleged that Gore “plays fast and loose with the facts to advance his personal agenda.”

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called Gore ” inspirational in focusing attention across the globe on this key issue.”

Julia Marton-Lefèvre, head of the World Conservation Union, said that, “as Mr. Gore and the IPCC have clearly demonstrated, we can solve the grave dangers posed by climate change if we have the will. Let the Nobel Peace Prize become the embodiment of that will.”

“Al Gore made it okay to talk about global warming over breakfast and dinner tables all across America,” added Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “He made this unprecedented challenge understandable and the solutions accessible for millions of people.”

‘Question of war and peace’
The Nobel committee often uses the coveted prize to cast the global spotlight on a relatively little-known person or cause. Since Gore already had a high profile some had doubted that the committee would bestow the prize on him.

In recent years, the committee has broadened the interpretation of peacemaking and disarmament efforts outlined by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in creating the prize with his 1895 will. The prize now often also recognizes human rights, democracy, elimination of poverty, sharing resources and the environment.

Two of the past three prizes have been untraditional, with the 2004 award to Kenya environmentalist Wangari Maathai and last year’s award to Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank, which makes to micro-loans to the country’s poor.

Jan Egeland, a Norwegian peace mediator and former U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, called climate change more than an environmental issue.

“It is a question of war and peace,” said Egeland, now director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo. “We’re already seeing the first climate wars, in the Sahel belt of Africa.” He said nomads and herders are in conflict with farmers because the changing climate has brought drought and a shortage of fertile lands.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

var url=location.href;var i=url.indexOf(’/did/’) + 1;if(i==0){i=url.indexOf(’/print/1/’) + 1;}if(i==0){i=url.indexOf(’&print=1′);}if(i>0){url = url.substring(0,i);document.write(’URL: ‘+url+’

‘);if(window.print){window.print()}else{alert(’To print his page press Ctrl-P on your keyboard \nor choose print from your browser or device after clicking OK’);}}URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21262661/

David S. Broder
Washington Post
October 11, 2007

Fred Thompson did not disgrace himself in his first formal debate as a Republican presidential candidate, but he also did not dominate the stage full of White House hopefuls in Dearborn, Mich., on Tuesday.

At least three others – John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney – registered with policy specifics and personal anecdotes more often and more strongly.

Giuliani seized every opportunity to whack Hillary Clinton, and held his ground in a spirited debate with Romney on their respective economic records and on the issue of the presidential line-item veto – Romney praising it and Giuliani defending his view that it is unconstitutional.

Their claims and counterclaims on spending and tax cuts are indecipherable to a layman, and it’s questionable how many voters will be swayed by the issue.

But both men got to set their strong jaws in place – and thereby assume the posture of leadership. Romney got to utter the word “Baloney!” to dismiss his rival, but Giuliani topped it by noting that he “took President Clinton to court and I beat him” when the Supreme Court ruled against Clinton on the line-item veto. “And I don’t think it’s a bad idea to have a Republican presidential candidate who actually has beat President Clinton at something.”

McCain was challenged only by such gadfly candidates as Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul, and he used the opportunity to effectively drill home two big themes. As president, he said, he would crack down on “wasteful” spending, wielding the veto pen, and he would attack the health care inflation that he said has made Detroit cars uncompetitive in the world market.

But what was striking about the performance of the leading Republicans was the absence of fresh policy ideas. A listener satisfied with President Bush’s economic policies would be safe in assuming their continuation – if any of them won. But given the economic travail in Michigan, where the candidates were debating, such complacency seemed more than a little odd.

Thompson was treated respectfully by his rivals, and his positions differed little from theirs: supporting free trade, tax cuts, spending restraint and regulatory relief. He was specific – and politically courageous – on one point, recommending a change that would index future Social Security benefits to prices, rather than wages, a change that over time would modestly reduce monthly benefits and help keep the system solvent. That is a change that opponents easily can criticize, even though it’s good policy. But Thompson’s frowning expression conveys less optimism than Romney’s or McCain’s, and his slow drawl has little of the urgency of Giuliani’s message.

Only at the very end of the two hours on MSNBC did Thompson relax enough to show a little humor. Asked how he had liked his first debate, he said, “I’ve enjoyed watching these fellows. I’ve got to admit it was getting a little boring without me. But I’m glad to be here now.”

It was hard for the leading candidates to acknowledge any serious blemishes in the current economic scene. That was left to others – most notably former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a populist preacher who has been gaining traction among religious conservatives and disaffected working people. He admonished his colleagues that people “hear Republicans on this stage talk about how great the economy is, and frankly when they hear that, they’re going to probably reach for the dial.” He went on to say that “the people who handle the bags and make the beds at our hotels and serve the food, many of them are having to work two jobs,” and still cannot afford college costs for their kids or health insurance for themselves. While the leading candidates preached the virtues of free trade, Huckabee said that Republicans have to address the dislocations caused by imports or “we’re going to get our britches beat next year.”

When the topic turned to unions, it was Huckabee who suggested that they are likely to grow in size and influence because the gap between top executives’ and workers’ pay will “create a huge appetite” for protection of wages.

And when confronted with the question of Bush’s veto of the children’s health insurance bill, a veto that was supported by all the leading candidates, Huckabee demurred. After squirming a bit, he finally said, “I’m not absolutely certain that that’s going to be the right way. … The political loss of that is going to be enormous.”

That kind of candor – and understanding – would be welcome among others in the field.

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 11, 2007; A08

When a case involves the power of the judiciary, the authority of the World Court, the role of Congress in enforcing treaties and the ability of states to ignore a direct order from the president, even the nine justices of the Supreme Court need more than an hour.

So Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told the attorneys to keep arguing — and fellow justices kept pulling out copies of the Constitution and peppering the lawyers with questions — long after the arguments in a complex case known as Medellin v. Texas were scheduled to come to an end yesterday.

The case began with a horrific rape and murder committed by Jos¿ Ernesto Medell¿n and others in 1993. But it has moved far beyond Texas’s death row to complicated questions about whether the president or an international court has the power to determine the rights U.S. courts afford criminal defendants.

Roberts was one of several justices who seemed skeptical of the deference owed to the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court. He asked Medill¿n’s lawyer, Donald F. Donovan: If the Supreme Court thought a World Court ruling preempted federal law, “We would have no authority to review the judgment itself?”

Justice Antonin Scalia agreed, saying he has a constitutional problem with giving an international body such power. “I am rather jealous of that authority,” Scalia said. “I don’t know on what basis we can allow some international court to decide what is the responsibility of this court, which is the meaning of the United States law.”

Medell¿n, 33, has lived in the United States since he was 3; he speaks and writes English but is still a Mexican national. He was part of a gang that attacked Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pe¿a, 16, as the girls walked home from a friend’s house. The girls were raped and murdered, one of them strangled with her own shoestring.

Medell¿n signed a waiver of his Miranda right to remain silent and confessed within hours of his arrest. But he was not told of his right to talk to the consulate of his country, guaranteed to those arrested outside their home countries, under the Vienna Convention. Medell¿n did not raise that right during his trial but did in one of his death penalty appeals.

Mexico, which has no death penalty, went to the International Court of Justice, and it ruled that the death sentences of 51 Mexican nationals in nine states, including Medell¿n’s, receive “review and reconsideration.”

The Bush administration first argued against Mexico, then President Bush in 2005 issued a memorandum to the attorney general saying that the United States will “discharge its international obligations . . . by having state courts give effect to the decision” of the World Court.

Bush’s home state said no. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said Bush’s directive exceeded his authority, and to give Medell¿n an additional hearing would violate the state’s judicial procedures.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer were most supportive of Bush’s desire to comply with the guarantees of treaties and the ruling of the international court.

“The United States gave its promise,” Ginsburg said. “It voluntarily accepted this jurisdiction. It didn’t have to.”

Breyer pulled out a copy of the Constitution and read a portion that said state judges must comply with U.S. treaties — “I guess it means, including Texas.”

Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who joined Medell¿n’s side, distanced himself from the argument that the treaties alone would mean the court must follow the World Court’s directive. The president’s agreement with the World Court is the “critical element,” Clement said.

But Texas Solicitor General R. Ted Cruz said Bush had no authority to issue a memorandum ordering a state court to do something its laws do not authorize — in this case, another hearing for Medell¿n.

The lively debate drew in all the justices, save Justice Clarence Thomas, who maintained his customary silence. At one point, the fray grew such that Justice John Paul Stevens asked Cruz to clarify a point — and then asked colleagues not to interrupt until Cruz finished.