KYOTO NO
Bush decided not to implement Kyoto -- favoured by Gore -- in 2001 when he decided that its curbs would cost U.S. jobs and that it unfairly omitted 2012 targets for developing nations. Until now he has favoured voluntary measures.
Broadening a definition of peace, the Nobel Committee said "there may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars," because of tensions over ever scarcer resources caused by more floods, droughts, desertification and rising seas.
"We face a true planetary emergency," Gore said on Friday. Such theories are not universally accepted, especially in the United States.
Stein Toennesson, head of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo said that climate change might lead to conflicts but "it could just as well lead to more cooperation."
Many experts say that creeping desertification, linked to climate change, is an underlying spur to the conflict in Darfur, Sudan, where 200,000 people have died.
"The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has today made it clear that combating climate change is a central peace and security policy for the 21st century," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme.
The IPCC said this year that it was "very likely" or at least 90 percent certain that humanity was to blame for global warming, mainly by burning fossil fuels. And it said time was running short for action that would have moderate costs.
The secretive five-strong committee made a first environmental award in 2004, to Kenya's Wangari Maathai for leading a campaign to plant 30 million trees across Africa.
"Now, we have started a small road, a path when it comes to environment," committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said, noting that the prize had been widened to new areas such as human rights over the years.
