The Nobel Peace Prize Forum addressed climate change with Al Gore as keynote speaker on 11 December 2018.
Eleven years after Mr. Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and almost three years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued an alarming report on the risks of a global warming increase above 1.5°C. Released in October 2018, the report stressed the disastrous consequences of what a 2°C increase would mean compared to a 1.5°C increase. The deceptively small difference between these two temperature increases obscures a predicted 10 cm rise in sea levels, severe Arctic sea ice decrease, and a loss of 99% of the Earth’s coral reefs. With carbon emission levels on the rise, the IPCC warned that “rapid and far-reaching” action is needed in order to keep global warming levels at 1.5°C.
Keynote speaker: Al Gore, former U.S. Vice-President and 2007 Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Panel: Director-General José Graziano da Silva, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO; Professor Katharine Hayhoe, Director of Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University; Dr. Thina Margrethe Saltvedt, Head of the Sustainable Finance Division of Nordea Bank, Norway; Professor Ricarda Winkelmann, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Moderator: Bjørn Hallvard Samset, Research Director at CICERO, Center for Climate Research