Al Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize today and urged the United States and China to make the boldest moves on climate change or ``stand accountable before history for their failure to act.''
``We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency - a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here,'' Gore said in his acceptance speech.
Gore shared the Nobel with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for sounding the alarm over global warming and spreading awareness on how to counteract it. the U.N. panel was represented at the ceremony by its leader, Rajendra Pachauri.
``It is time to make peace with the planet,'' Gore said at the gala ceremony in Oslo's city hall, in front of Norway's royalty, leaders and invited guests. ``We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war.''
The former vice president urged China and the U.S. - the world's biggest carbon emitters - to ``make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act.''
His remarks came as governments met in Bali, Indonesia, to start work on a new international treaty to reduce climate-damaging carbon dioxide emissions. Gore and Pachauri plan to fly there Wednesday to join the climate talks.
The governments hope to have the new pact, which succeeds the Kyoto accord, in place by 2012, but Gore has said the urgency of the problem means they should aim to come to an agreement by 2010.
Before his speech, Gore said in an interview with The Associated Press that he believes the next U.S. president will shift the country's course on climate change and engage in global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
``The new president, whichever party wins the election, is likely to have to change the position on this climate crisis,'' Gore said in the interview. ``I do believe the U.S., soon, is to have a more constructive role.''
He said it was not too late for Bush administration to join efforts to draft a new global treaty limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
``I have urged President Bush and his administration to be part of the world community's effort to solve this crisis,'' Gore said. ``I hope they will change their position.''
The Bush administration opposed the Kyoto treaty on climate change, saying it would hurt the U.S. economy and objecting that fast developing nations like China and India were not required to reduce emissions.
The former U.S. vice president, who lost a bid for the White House to George W. Bush in 2000 and has repeatedly said he has no plan to run again in 2008, said he would have pushed climate to the top of the agenda if he had been president.
"Some of the candidates have made speeches which are quite good and proposals that are quite responsible, but overall the issue has not achieved the kind of priority that I think it should have," Gore told Reuters.
"I don't blame the candidates for that, some of them have tried to push it higher on the agenda," he said before collecting the peace prize which he shared with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
"That is just the very reason why I have put so much of my time into trying to change the way people think about this crisis in my country and around the world -- so that candidates will hear from citizens that they want this to be the top priority," Gore said in the Norwegian capital.
Asked what would have been different if he had been president, Gore said: "I like to think that I would have been able to push it (climate change) right to the top of the agenda.
"It takes time to talk to people in enough places to create a critical mass of opinion and urgency that will cause us to cross the tipping point beyond which a majority will demand that we solve this crisis," he said.
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