The 43rd President of the United States, Al Gore, was announced this morning as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless advocacy of climate change and global warming:

He said that global warming was not a political issue but a worldwide crisis.

“We face a true planetary emergency. … It is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity,” he said. “It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.”

The win is also likely add further fuel to a burgeoning movement in the United States for Gore to run for president in 2008, which he has so far said he does not plan to do…

First off, I’m pleased as punch that Gore won the Nobel. Not only does his win thrust the climate change issue back onto the front page, but it points out what a true leader does: lead on issues of global importance.

An NPR report on Gore’s win was focused on one of the rarely discussed (at least beyond the wonkiness of think tanks) aspects of climate change: more war for resources. Hey, it’s happened throughout history, even here in the U.S. And as most thinking people already know, George Bush’s conquest of Iraq had nothing to do with WMD or bringing democracy to the country. It was all about the resources — oil.

Yesterday evening, I was reading some new material about the privatization of water supplies around the world. With only 3% of the world’s water being potable, in a climate change environment, this scarce resource becomes even scarcer. And unlike oil, we can’t live without it. Wars will be (and have been) fought over water rights. Do we let multinational companies snap up this resource, or does a requirement of life such as access to clean, potable water remain in the public domain? Climate change will be a key piece of the answer to that question.

Everything’s so connected. Al Gore made sense of these connections, and boiled them down to an understandable framework that every policy maker on the planet could understand. His contribution to the climate change debate was not scientific - it was leadership. The work that he continues to do in this arena has made a tremendous difference in everyone’s understanding of the issues involved.

We can only imagine what the world would be like right now had a few thousand hanging chads in Florida been properly counted. In my own life, I’ve reached many forks in the road that, once taken, can’t be reversed. Once a path is chosen, it’s almost impossible to return to the previous road. In November, 2000 (actually, it was December when SCOTUS awarded the presidency to George Bush) the U.S. pushed the world down a path that I don’t think most nations would have otherwise chosen.

Today, there will be many calls for Al Gore to rethink his decision not to seek the presidency in 2008. Mine won’t be among them, simply because I believe that his leadership needs to continue to be focused on climate change. There is no more important, long term issue facing the world today. As president, he couldn’t have the singular focus that this issue requires.

Sorry, Susie.