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Gore, in his acceptance speech before the "Majesties, Highnesses, and Honorable members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee" told how the inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel, read a mistaken obituary of himself in the paper describing him as 'The Merchant of Death.' Shaken by the pronouncement, he resolved to serve peace, and created the prizes awarded each year in his name.

"Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision of what might be," Gore said.

Stating that the scientists he shares this year's Nobel Peace Prize with have presented us with "a choice between two different futures," Gore said that though we are confronting a planetary emergency, "we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst - though not all - of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly."

Unfortunately, said Gore, many of our leader's can be described using Winston's Churchill's words, "decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift."

"So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.

As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong."

Citing the US Navy, which released a study saying the Polar Ice cap may melt entirely during the summer in as little as seven years, Gore said the signs are hard to misinterpret: 

• "Major cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts and melting glaciers.
• Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods.
• Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations of places they have long called home.
• Unprecedented wildfires have forced a half million people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the government in another.
• Climate refugees have migrated into areas already inhabited by people with different cultures, religions, and traditions, increasing the potential for conflict.
• Stronger storms in the Pacific and Atlantic have threatened whole cities.
• Millions have been displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico, and 18 countries in Africa.
• As temperature extremes have increased, tens of thousands have lost their lives.
• We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into extinction. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed."

Saying these signs have been building even since Nobel's time, but "unlike most other forms of pollution, CO2 is invisible, tasteless, and odorless -- which has helped keep the truth about what it is doing to our climate out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, the catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented - and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable."

"Now science is warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution that is trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates back out of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent 'carbon summer.'"

Gore said we must quickly mobilize our civilization "with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war," and that prior struggles were not won by "comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was not real or imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinary life might be lived even in the presence of extraordinary threat...No, these were calls to come to the defense of the common future. They were calls upon the courage, generosity and strength of entire peoples."

"This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun's energy for pennies or invent an engine that's carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world."

Speaking of Cordell Hull, a man from Gore's own hometown Carthage, Tennessee, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in founding the United Nations, Gore said that as Hull's generation found moral authority in fighting fascism, "so too can we find our greatest opportunity in rising to solve the climate crisis." 

"By facing and removing the danger of the climate crisis, we have the opportunity to gain the moral authority and vision to vastly increase our own capacity to solve other crises that have been too long ignored.

We must understand the connections between the climate crisis and the afflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV-Aids and other pandemics. As these problems are linked, so too must be their solutions. We must begin by making the common rescue of the global environment the central organizing principle of the world community."

Gore then made specific calls to action by world leaders meeting in Bali this week: 

1. Ratify a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions everywhere in the world by 2010 - two years sooner than presently being considered.
2. Use the market in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedy reductions.
3. Heads of state should meet early next year to review what was accomplished in Bali, take personal responsibility for addressing this crisis, and meet every three months until the treaty is completed.
4. Establish a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide.
5. And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon -- with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way to accelerate solutions to this crisis.

"But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do enough: the United States and China. While India is also growing fast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters - most of all, my own country - that will need to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act.

Both countries should stop using the other's behavior as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment." 

In closing, Gore spoke of renewing political will, and answering to the next generation: 

"The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: "What were you thinking; why didn't you act?" Or they will ask instead: "How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?"

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

So let us renew it, and say together: "We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act."