From the breaking news file comes word from AP that former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s climate change panel have been awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for spreading awareness of man-made climate change and laying the foundations for counteracting it.

Gore, who was an advocate of stemming climate change and global warning well before his eight years as vice president, called the award meaningful because of his co-winner, calling the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the “world’s pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis.” Gore plans to donate his half of the $1.5 million prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan nonprofit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion worldwide about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.