Al Gore

Al Gore
Al Gore in 1994
45th Vice President of the United States
In office January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Dan Quayle
Succeeded by	Dick Cheney
United States Senator from Tennessee
In office January 3, 1985 – January 2, 1993
Preceded by	Howard Baker
Succeeded by	Harlan Mathews
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee's 6th district
In office January 3, 1983 – January 3, 1985
Preceded by	Robin Beard
Succeeded by	Bart Gordon
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee's 4th district
In office January 3, 1977 – January 3, 1983
Preceded by	Joe L. Evins
Succeeded by	Jim Cooper
Personal details
Born	(1948-03-31) March 31, 1948 Washington, D.C.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" A. Gore
Alma mater	Harvard University, Vanderbilt University
Website	algore.com

Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. (born March 31, 1948) was the forty-fifth Vice President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Before that, Vice President Gore served in the U. S. House of Representatives (1977–85) and the U. S. Senate (1985–93), representing Tennessee. A prominent environmental activist, he shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

Gore was the Democratic nominee for president in the 2000 election in which he won the popular vote by a plurality. A legal controversy over the Florida election recount, ultimately settled in favor of George W. Bush by the Supreme Court, made the election one of the most controversial in American history.

Today, Gore is chairman of the American television channel Current TV, chairman of Generation Investment Management, a director on the board of Apple Inc., an unofficial advisor to Google's senior management, and chairman of the Alliance for Climate Protection. He recently joined venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, to head that firm's climate change solutions group.

As an environmental activist, Gore lectures widely on the topic of global warming, which he calls "the climate crisis." In 2006, he starred in the Academy Award-winning documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, discussing global warming and the environment. Under his leadership, one of Gore's organizations, Save Our Selves, organized the July 7, 2007 benefit concert Live Earth in an effort to raise awareness about climate change.

While Gore has frequently stated that "I'm not planning to be a candidate again," there are continuing efforts to convince him to run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Early life

Albert A. Gore, Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., to Albert Arnold Gore, Sr., a U.S. Representative (1939–1944, 1945–1953) and Senator (1953–1971) from Tennessee and Pauline LaFon Gore, one of the first women to graduate from Vanderbilt University Law School. He divided his childhood between Washington, and Carthage, Tennessee: as a boy, during the school year, the family lived in a hotel in Washington and during summer vacations, Gore worked on the family farm in Carthage, where the Gores grew hay and tobacco and raised cattle.

Gore attended St. Albans School where he ranked 25th (of 51) in his senior class. In preparation for his college applications, Gore scored a 1355 on his SAT (625 in verbal and 730 in math). Al Gore's IQ scores, from tests administered at St. Alban's School in 1961 and 1964 (his freshman and senior years) respectively, have been recorded as 133 and 134.

In 1965, Gore enrolled at Harvard College, the only university to which he applied. He scored in the lower fifth of the class for two years in a row and, after finding himself bored with his classes in his declared English major, Gore switched majors, found a passion for government, and graduated with honors from Harvard in June 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government. After returning from the military he took religious studies courses at Vanderbilt and then entered the university's law school. He left Vanderbilt without a degree to run for an open seat in Tennessee's 3rd Congressional District in 1976.

File:AlGoreVietnam.gif

Gore as a field reporter in Vietnam

Gore opposed the Vietnam War and could have avoided serving overseas by accepting a spot in the National Guard that a friend of his family had reserved for him, or by other means of avoiding the draft. Gore has stated that his sense of civic duty compelled him to serve in some capacity. He enlisted in the United States Army on August 7, 1969. After basic training at Fort Dix, Gore was assigned as a military journalist writing for The Army Flier, the base newspaper at Fort Rucker. With seven months remaining in his enlistment, Gore was shipped to Vietnam, arriving on January 2, 1971. He served for four months with the 20th Engineer Brigade in Bien Hoa and for another month at the Army Engineer Command in Long Binh.

Gore said in 1988 that his experience in Vietnam:

"didn't change my conclusions about the war being a terrible mistake, but it struck me that opponents to the war, including myself, really did not take into account the fact that there were an awful lot of South Vietnamese who desperately wanted to hang on to what they called freedom. Coming face to face with those sentiments expressed by people who did the laundry and ran the restaurants and worked in the fields was something I was naively unprepared for."

As his unit was standing down, he applied for and received a non-essential personnel honorable discharge two months early in order to attend divinity school at Vanderbilt University. Gore left Vanderbilt after completing the required one-year Rockefeller Foundation scholarship for students returning to secular work. In 1970, Gore married Mary Elizabeth Aitcheson (known as Tipper), whom he had first met at his high school senior prom in Washington, D.C.

Gore then spent five years as a reporter for The Tennessean, a newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee. His investigations of possible corruption among members of Nashville's Metro Council resulted in the arrest and prosecution of two councilmen for separate offenses. Gore then took a leave of absence from the paper to try law school. Before he could finish, he learned that his local congressman planned to retire in 1976.

Political career

Congressional service

When Congressman Joe L. Evins announced his retirement after 30 years, Gore quit law school in March 1976 to run for the United States House of Representatives, in Tennessee's fourth district. Gore defeated Stanley Rogers in the Democratic primary, then ran unopposed in the general election and was elected to his first Congressional post. He was re-elected three times, in 1978, 1980, and 1982. In 1984, Gore successfully ran for a seat in the United States Senate, which had been vacated by Republican Majority Leader Howard Baker. Gore served as a Senator from Tennessee until 1993, when he became Vice President.

While in Congress, Gore was a member of the following committees: Armed Services (Defense Industry and Technology Projection Forces and Regional Defense; Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence); Commerce, Science and Transportation (Communications; Consumer; Science, Technology and Space — chairman 1992; Surface Transportation; National Ocean Policy Study); Joint Committee on Printing; Joint Economic Committee; and Rules and Administration.

On March 19 1979, Gore became the first person to appear on C-SPAN, making a speech in the House chambers. In the late 1980s, Gore introduced the Gore Bill, which was later passed as the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991. The bill was one of the most important pieces of legislation directly affecting the expansion of the Internet.

Opposition to U.S. government support of Saddam Hussein

While Senator, Gore twice attempted to get the U.S. government to pull the plug on support to Saddam Hussein, citing Hussein's use of poison gas, support of terrorism, and his burgeoning nuclear program, but was opposed both times by the Reagan and Bush administrations. In the wake of the Al-Anfal Campaign, during which Hussein staged deadly mustard and nerve gas attacks on Kurdish Iraqis, Gore cosponsored the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988, which would have cut all assistance to Iraq. The bill was defeated in part due to intense lobbying of Congress by the Reagan-Bush White House and a veto threat from President Reagan. Gore's positions as a Senator with regard to Iraq would later become an issue in his 1992 campaign for Vice President.

1988 Presidential election

Main article: Al Gore presidential campaign, 1988

Gore ran for President in the 1988 United States presidential election, but failed to obtain the Democratic nomination, which went to Michael Dukakis. During the campaign, Gore's strategy involved skipping the Iowa caucus and putting little emphasis on the New Hampshire Primary in order to concentrate his efforts on the South. He won Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee in the Super Tuesday primaries but dropped out of the presidential race in April after a poor showing in the New York primary.

On April 3, 1989, Gore's six-year-old son Albert was nearly killed in an automobile accident while leaving the Baltimore Orioles' opening day game. Because of the resulting lengthy healing process, his father chose to stay near him during the recovery instead of laying the foundation for a 1992 presidential primary campaign. Gore started writing Earth in the Balance, his book on environmental conservation, during his son's recovery. It became the first book written by a sitting Senator to make The New York Times bestseller list since John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage.

Vice Presidency

United States Vice President Gore talking with United States President Bill Clinton as the two pass through the Colonnade at the White House.

Bill Clinton chose Gore to be his running mate for the 1992 United States presidential election on July 9, 1992. Gore was inaugurated as the 45th Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993. Clinton and Gore were re-elected to a second term in the 1996 election.

According to the U.S. government, the U.S. economy expanded for all eight years of the Clinton/Gore administration. One factor was the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, for which Gore cast the tie-breaking vote. The Administration worked closely with the Republican-led House to slow federal spending and eventually balance the federal budget. One of Gore's major works as Vice President was the National Performance Review, which pointed out waste, fraud, and other abuse in the federal government and stressed the need for cutting the size of the bureaucracy and the number of regulations. Gore stated that the National Performance Review later helped guide President Clinton when he down-sized the federal government.

In 1993, Gore debated Ross Perot on CNN's Larry King Live on the issue of free trade, with Gore arguing for free trade and the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and Perot arguing against it. Public opinion polls taken after the debate showed that a majority of Americans thought Gore won the debate and now supported NAFTA. The bill subsequently passed 234–200 in the House of Representatives.

In 1996 Gore was criticized for attending an event at the Buddhist Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, California. In an interview the following year, he said:

I did not know that it was a fund-raiser. I knew it was a political event, and I knew there were finance people that were going to be present, and so that alone should have told me, 'This is inappropriate and this is a mistake; don't do this.' And I take responsibility for that. It was a mistake—Gore on NBC's Today show, Jan. 24, 1997.

The temple was later implicated in a campaign donation laundering scheme. (See 1996 United States campaign finance controversy.) Attorney General Janet Reno eventually rejected a request to appoint an independent counsel to look into the fund-raising practices of Vice President Gore.

In March 1997, Vice President Gore also had to explain certain fund-raising calls he made to solicit funds for the Democratic Party for the 1996 election. In a news conference, Gore responded that

All calls that I made were charged to the Democratic National Committee. I was advised there was nothing wrong with that. My counsel tells me there is no controlling legal authority that says that is any violation of any law.

The phrase "no controlling legal authority" was severely criticized by some commentators, such as Charles Krauthammer, who wrote that "Whatever other legacies Al Gore leaves behind between now and retirement, he forever bequeaths this newest weasel word to the lexicon of American political corruption." On the other hand, Robert L. Weinberg argued in The Nation in 2000 that Gore actually had the U.S. Constitution in his favor on this, although he did concede that Gore's "use of the phrase was judged by many commentators to have been a political mistake of the first order" and noted that it was used often in stump speeches by George W. Bush when Bush was campaigning against Gore in that year's presidential race.

Also in 1997, Gore became the highest elected official to have run a marathon while in office. He ran the 1997 Marine Corps Marathon in 4:54:25 (an 11:14 mile pace).

In 1998, Gore began promoting a NASA satellite that would provide a constant view of Earth, marking the first time such an image would have been made since The Blue Marble photo from the 1972 Apollo 17 mission. The "Triana" satellite would have been permanently mounted in the L₁ Lagrangian Point, 1.5 million km away.

Also in 1998, Gore became associated with Digital Earth.

In 1999, Gore became the subject of criticism by AIDS activists. According to a June 18 1999 article in the Washington Post the activists said that "Gore, in talks with South African President Thabo Mbeki, has threatened trade sanctions if South Africa permits the widespread sale of cheaper, generic drugs that would cut into U.S. companies' sales." Gore responded by stating, "I love this country. I love the First Amendment [...] Let me say in response to those who may have chosen an inappropriate way to make their point, that actually the crisis of AIDS in Africa is one that should command the attention of people in the United States and around the world."

2000 Presidential election

Main article: Al Gore presidential campaign, 2000

File:Gorelieberman.jpg

Gore/Lieberman 2000 campaign logo

After two terms as Vice President, Gore ran for President again in the 2000 United States Presidential election, selecting Senator Joe Lieberman to be his vice-presidential running mate. The election was one of the closest and most controversial presidential elections in the history of the United States.

Gore's daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff, worked on her father's campaign during the election as Youth Outreach Chair. Together with her father's former Harvard roommate Tommy Lee Jones, Schiff officially nominated Gore as the presidential candidate during the 2000 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. She also introduced her father during the launching of his campaign.

During the entire campaign, Gore was neck-and-neck in the polls with Republican Governor of Texas George W. Bush. On Election Day, the results were so close that the outcome of the race took over a month to resolve, highlighted by the premature declaration of a winner on election night, and an extremely close result in the state of Florida. On election night, news networks first called Florida for Gore, later retracted the projection, and then called Florida for Bush, before finally retracting that projection as well.

The race was ultimately decided by a margin of only 537 votes in Florida. Florida's 25 electoral votes were awarded to Bush only after numerous court challenges. Gore publicly conceded the election after the Supreme Court of the United States in Bush v. Gore ruled that the Florida recount was unconstitutional and that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed by the December 12 deadline, effectively ending the recounts. Gore strongly disagreed with the Court's decision, but decided "for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession."

Gore became the fourth candidate in American history to win the popular vote (by half a million more votes than his opponent) but lose the electoral vote. Gore ultimately received 267 electoral votes to Bush's 271.

Running mate Joe Lieberman later criticized Gore for adopting a populist theme during their 2000 campaign, and stated he had objected to Gore's "people vs. the powerful" message, believing it was not the best strategy for Democrats to use to win the election.

In the introduction to his global warming presentation, Gore has jokingly introduced himself as "the former next President of the United States".

During his 2000 campaign for the presidency, Gore himself attributed positive economic results to his and Clinton's policies — more than 22 million new jobs, the highest homeownership in American history (up to that time), the lowest unemployment in 30 years, the paying off of $360 billion of the national debt, the lowest poverty rate in 20 years, higher incomes at all levels, the conversion of the hitherto largest budget deficit in American history into the largest surplus, the lowest government spending in three decades, the lowest federal income tax burden in 35 years, and more families owning stocks than had up to that point. However, Gore later placed a large share of the blame for his election loss on the economic downturn and NASDAQ crash of March 2000 in an interview with National Public Radio's Bob Edwards.

2004 election activities

As the first major speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Gore presented himself as a living reminder that every vote counts. "Let's make sure not only that the Supreme Court does not pick the next president, but also that this president is not the one who picks the next Supreme Court," said Gore. Gore directed remarks to those who had abandoned the Democratic Party four years ago to support third-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader, asking them, "Do you still believe that there was no difference between the candidates?"

Initially, Al Gore was touted as a logical opponent of George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election. "Re-elect Gore!" was a common slogan among many Democrats who felt he had been cheated out of the presidency, on the grounds of his winning the popular vote and the Florida voting controversies. On December 16, 2002, however, Gore announced that he would not run in 2004, saying that it was time for "fresh faces" and "new ideas" to emerge from the Democrats. When he appeared on a 60 Minutes interview, Gore said that he felt if he had run, the focus of the election would be the rematch rather than the issues. Gore's former running mate, Joe Lieberman quickly announced his own candidacy for the presidency, which he had vowed he would not do if Gore ran.

Despite Gore taking himself out of the race, a handful of his supporters formed a national campaign to "draft" him into running. However, that effort largely came to an end when Gore publicly endorsed Governor of Vermont Howard Dean (over his former running mate Lieberman) weeks before the first primary of the election cycle. There was still some effort to encourage write-in votes for Gore in the primaries by Patriots for Al Gore who were separate from the draft movement. Although Gore did receive a small number of votes in New Hampshire and New Mexico, that effort was halted when John Kerry pulled into the lead for the nomination.

On February 9, 2004, on the eve of the Tennessee primary, Gore gave what some consider his harshest criticism of the president yet when he accused George W. Bush of betraying the country by using the 9/11 attacks as a justification for the invasion of Iraq. Gore also urged all Democrats to unite behind their eventual nominee proclaiming, "Any one of these candidates is far better than George W. Bush." In March 2004 Gore, along with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, united behind Kerry as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

On April 28, 2004, Gore announced that he would be donating $6 million to various Democratic Party groups. Drawing from his funds left over from his 2000 campaign, Gore pledged to donate $4 million to the Democratic National Committee. The party's Senate and House committees would each get $1 million, and the party from Gore's home state of Tennessee would receive $250,000. In addition, Gore announced that all of the surplus funds in his "Recount Fund" from the 2000 election controversy that resulted in the Supreme Court halting the counting of the ballots, a total of $240,000, will be donated to the Florida Democratic Party. Gore stressed the importance of voting and having every vote counted, foreshadowing the 2004 United States election voting controversies.

2008 Presidential election plans

Gore has not stated that he will participate as a candidate in the 2008 presidential election. However, as he has not rejected the possibility outright, the prospect of a Gore candidacy remains a topic of public speculation. Some of Gore's supporters have publicly encouraged him to join the race, and his electability among Democrats remains relatively high.

A nationwide Gallup poll of 485 Democrats and Democratic leaners in mid-November 2007 showed Gore receiving 17% of the votes in a hypothetical Democratic primary, second to Hillary Clinton, tied with Barack Obama, and ahead of John Edwards. An April 2007 Quinnipiac University poll of 504 registered Democrats in New Jersey showed Gore receiving 12% of the votes in a hypothetical Democratic primary, in third place behind Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Gore and his family have commented on whether Gore will run in the 2008 presidential election. In December 2006, Gore stated on NBC's Today: "I am not planning to run for president again [...] I haven't completely ruled it out." His son, Albert Gore III, followed with a comment in a December 14, 2006 article: "I know that [my father] has no plans to run in 2008 [...] Well, I guess I have to add his addendum. I think the way he always says it is, "I don't see any circumstances under which I would run for president.""

The release of An Inconvenient Truth in 2006 increased Gore's popularity among progressives. A CNN telephone poll conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation of registered or independent leaning Democrats in November 2006 had Gore with 14% support in a theoretical multi-candidate Democratic primary election.

Donna Brazile, Gore's campaign chairwoman from the 2000 campaign made cryptic comments during a speech on January 31, 2007, at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania stating, "Wait till Oscar night, I tell people: 'I'm dating. I haven't fallen in love yet. On Oscar night, if Al Gore has slimmed down 25 or 30 pounds, Lord knows.'" The meaning of these remarks became clearer when on award night, while in attendance and acting as a presenter for an award, Gore began a speech that seemed to be leading up to an announcement that he would run for president. However, background music drowned him out and he was escorted offstage, implying it was a rehearsed gag.

Others have expressed an interest in seeing Gore run in 2008. According to the February 6, 2007 issue of The Santa Barbara Independent, when Gore received The Sir David Attenborough Award for Excellence in Nature Filmmaking at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on February 2, director James Cameron (who presented him with the award) stated: "[I] beseech Mr. Gore to step up to the plate one more time!" Furthermore, the February 8, 2007 edition of The Washington Post notes in the article Supporters Push Gore to Run in 2008, "Veterans of Al Gore's past are quietly assembling a campaign to draft the former vice president into the 2008 presidential race — despite his repeated statements that he's not running [...] In 2002, Gore asked [Dylan] Malone, to stop a draft effort he had begun; Malone did. Malone started up again and, so far, Gore hasn't waved him off."

The question of whether or not Gore will run was the cover story of the May 28, 2007 issue of TIME magazine, The Last Temptation of Al Gore.

A 29 June 2007 article in the The Guardian cited a poll conducted "in New Hampshire by 7News and Suffolk University" that found that if Gore "were to seek the Democratic nomination, 29% of Mrs. Clinton's backers would switch their support to him [...] when defections from other candidates are factored in, the man who controversially lost to Mr. Bush in the 2000 election takes command of the field, with 32% support."

Private citizen

Gore has been involved in education on a number of levels. He taught at four universities in 2001 as a visiting professor (Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Fisk University Middle Tennessee State University, and UCLA.) He was also elected an honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 2007. He will be inducted in a ceremony in October 2007 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Finally, Concordia University awarded Gore an honorary doctorate on March 22 during the Youth Action Montreal's Youth Summit on Climate Change in Quebec, Canada.

On September 23, 2002, in a speech before the Commonwealth Club, Gore gave what many consider to be one of the strongest speeches by any public figure criticizing President George W. Bush and Congress for their rush to war prior to the outbreak of hostilities in Iraq. In it, Gore warned of the great expense the war was sure to incur, the risk to America's reputation in the world, and the questionable legality of the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war.

In September 2005, Gore chartered two aircraft to evacuate 270 evacuees from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He was highly critical of the government and federal response in the days after the hurricane.

Promoting environmental awareness

Gore giving his global warming talk on April 7, 2006.

According to The Concord Monitor, "Gore was one of the first politicians to grasp the seriousness of climate change and to call for a reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases. He held the first congressional hearings on the subject in the late 1970s." During his tenure in Congress, Gore co-sponsored hearings on toxic waste in 1978–79, and hearings on global warming in the 1980s. In 1989, while still a Senator, Gore published an editorial in the Washington Post, in which he argued, "Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand new relationship with the planet Earth. The world's forests are being destroyed; an enormous hole is opening in the ozone layer. Living species are dying at an unprecedented rate."

On Earth Day 1994, Gore launched the GLOBE program, an education and science activity that, according to Forbes magazine, "made extensive use of the Internet to increase student awareness of their environment".

In the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Protocol, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. He was opposed by the Senate, which passed unanimously (95-0) the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On November 12 1998, Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations. The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification.

In 2004, he launched Generation Investment Management. This firm, which he chairs, seeks out companies which take a responsible view on global issues such as climate change. It was created to assist the growing demand for an investment style that can bring returns by blending traditional equity research with a focus on more intangible non-financial factors such as social and environmental responsibility and corporate governance.

An Inconvenient Truth

Gore starred in the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, released on May 24, 2006. The film documents the evidence for anthropogenic global warming and warns of the consequences of people not making immediate changes to their behavior. It is the fourth-highest-grossing documentary in U.S. history.

The film won the 2007 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The Oscar was awarded to director Davis Guggenheim, who asked Gore to join him and other members of the crew on stage. Gore gave a brief speech, saying, "My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis. It's not a political issue; it's a moral issue. We have everything we need to get started, with the possible exception of the will to act. That's a renewable resource. Let's renew it."

Gore also published a book of the same title, which became a bestseller. In reference to the use of nuclear power to mitigate global warming, Gore has stated, "Nuclear energy is not the panacea for tackling global warming."

Recent activism

In recent years, Gore has remained busy traveling the world speaking and participating in events mainly aimed towards global warming awareness and prevention. His keynote presentation on global warming has received standing ovations, and he has presented it at least 1,000 times according to his monologue in An Inconvenient Truth. His speaking fee is $100,000.

Gore is a vocal proponent of carbon neutrality, buying a carbon offset each time he travels by aircraft. Gore and his family drive hybrid vehicles. In "An Inconvenient Truth" Gore calls for people to conserve energy. Critics contend that the Gore family mansion in Nashville consumes 12 to 20 times more energy than the average family home. Gore's supporters, however, counter that the Gore Family has done much to offset their carbon footprint and electrical usage, such as through the installation of solar panels. Also, the family's power comes entirely from renewable energy sources through the "Green Power Switch" program.

Interest in Al Gore's speeches reached such a point that a public lecture at University of Toronto on February 21, 2007, on the topic of global warming, led to a crash of the ticket sales website within minutes of opening. A few weeks later, he spoke at another event in the same city and, for the first time, made the argument that employers have a significant role to play in mobilizing their employees to take action on climate change.

During Global Warming Awareness Month, on February 9, 2007, Al Gore and Richard Branson announced the Virgin Earth Challenge, a competition offering a $25 million prize for the first person or organization to produce a viable design that results in the removal of atmospheric greenhouse gases.

On July 7, 2007, Live Earth benefit concerts were held around the world in an effort to raise awareness about climate change. The event was the brainchild of Gore and Kevin Wall of Save Our Selves. On July 21, 2007, Gore announced he was teaming with actress Cameron Diaz for a TV climate contest, 60 Seconds to Save the Earth, to gain people's support in solving the climate crisis.

2007 Nobel Peace Prize

Al Gore receives the Nobel Peace Prize in the city hall of Oslo, December 10, 2007

File:Nobel Peace Prize winners Gore & Pachauri in Grand Hotel, Norway 2-2.jpg

Gore and Rajendra Pachauri on the balcony of Grand Hotel, Oslo.
Photo: Herman Ferre

Gore was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which was shared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, headed by Rajendra K. Pachauri (Delhi, India). The award was given "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change" on October 12, 2007.

Gore made the following statement after receiving the prize:

I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis—a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years. We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level. My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

Gore and Pachauri accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 in Oslo, Norway on 10 December, 2007.

Internet and technology

Main article: Al Gore's contributions to the Internet and technology

Al Gore was involved in the development and mainstreaming of the Internet as both Senator and Vice-President. Campbell-Kelly and Aspray note in Chapter 12 of their 1996 text, Computer: A History of the Information Machine, that up until the early 1990s, public usage of the Internet was limited. They continue to state that the "problem of giving ordinary Americans network access had exercised Senator Al Gore since the late 1970s" leading him to develop legislation that would alleviate this problem. Gore thus began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (Gore Bill) which was passed on December 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII) which Gore referred to as the "information superhighway".

In a March 9 1999 interview on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Gore stated, "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system." This was often misquoted by media outlets who wrote that he claimed to have "invented the internet."

In commenting on the interview, Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn argued in a 2000 email that, "We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he 'invented' the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet."

Gore would later poke fun at the controversy on the The Late Show with David Letterman when he read Letterman's Top 10 List, which for this show was called, "Top Ten Rejected Gore - Lieberman Campaign Slogans." Number nine on the list was: "Remember, America, I gave you the Internet, and I can take it away!"

Gore has been a member of the board of directors of Apple Inc. since 2003 and serves as a Senior Advisor to Google Inc.

Gore's 2007 book, The Assault on Reason is an analysis of what he calls the "emptying out of the marketplace of ideas" in civic discourse, which, according to Gore, is due to the influence of electronic media, especially television, and which endangers American democracy; but he also expresses the belief that the Internet can revitalize and ultimately "redeem the integrity of representative democracy."

Honors and awards

• 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (environment)
• 2007 Primetime Emmy Award: Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Television for Current TV (interactive technology)
• 2007 International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences: Founders Award for Current TV and for work in the area of global warming
• 2007 Quill Awards: History/current events/politics, The Assault on Reason
• 2007 Prince of Asturias Award in Spain (environment)
• 2007 The Sir David Attenborough Award for Excellence in Nature Filmmaking (environment)
• 2007 Honorary Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2006 Quill Awards: History/current events/politics, An Inconvenient Truth
• 2005 Webby Awards: Lifetime Achievement Award (interactive technology)

Al Gore's appearances in popular culture

Gore as depicted in the Futurama episode "Crimes of the Hot".

Gore has made numerous appearances in popular culture related to environmentalism. Among the most notable are his appearances on Matt Groening's cartoon sitcom Futurama as himself, both in the episodic series and in the 2007 film, Futurama: Bender's Big Score. He first appears in the season 2 finale, "Anthology of Interest I". In this episode, Gore leads his team of "Vice Presidential Action Rangers" in their goal to protect the space-time continuum. In later appears season 4 episode "Crimes of the Hot", this time as an elaborately decorated head in a jar, helping to combat global warming. Finally, in his appearance in Bender's Big Score, both as himself and a head, he makes a subtle jab at rising gas prices when he claims that $100 will buy him one gallon of gas in 2012.

Gore's willingness to poke fun at himself on the show was later cited by pundits as an example of the way he re-invented the purportedly stiff and emotionless persona that he had displayed in public before his electoral loss in 2000. In a review of the episode, Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz called it a "groundbreaking role" and suggested that it was "post-election reemergence ... as carefully choreographed as a political campaign".

• In 2002, Gore hosted Saturday Night Live (episode #533).
• In 2006, Gore used a short clip from Futurama to explain how global warming works in his presentations and in An Inconvenient Truth.
• In 2006, Gore appeared on Saturday Night Live (episode #603), In an opening sketch, Gore is in a parallel Earth in which he won the 2000 Presidential race. Gore describes the state of the nation: global warming has been stopped; gasoline costs 19¢ a gallon; George W. Bush is Commissioner of Baseball; welfare and Social Security have been reformed and America now enjoys universal health care; Gore helped develop an anti-hurricane/tornado machine; and the federal surplus is down to eleven trillion dollars.
• On November 8, 2007, Gore made a guest appearance on 30 Rock, in the episode, "Greenzo," (Season 2, Episode 26).

Electoral history

1984 Tennessee United States Senatorial Election

Al Gore (D) 60.7% of popular vote

Victor Ashe (R) 33.8% of popular vote

Ed McAteer (I) 5.3% of popular vote

1988 Democratic presidential primaries

Michael Dukakis - 9,898,750 (42.51%)

Jesse Jackson - 6,788,991 (29.15%)

Al Gore - 3,185,806 (13.68%)

Dick Gephardt - 1,399,041 (6.01%)

Paul M. Simon - 1,082,960 (4.65%)

Gary Hart - 415,716 (1.79%)

Unpledged - 250,307 (1.08%)

1990 Tennessee United States Senatorial Election

Al Gore (D) (inc.) 69.6%

Dwight Henry (R) 30.4%

United States presidential Election, 1992

Bill Clinton/Al Gore (D) - 44,909,806 (43.0%) and 370 electoral votes (32 states and D.C. carried)

George H. W. Bush/Dan Quayle (R) (inc.) - 39,104,550 (37.4%) and 168 electoral votes (18 states carried)

Ross Perot/James Stockdale (Independents) - 19,743,821 (18.9%) and 0 electoral votes

United States presidential election, 1996

Bill Clinton/Al Gore (D) (inc.) - 47,400,125 (49.2%) and 379 electoral votes (31 states and D.C. carried)

Bob Dole/Jack Kemp (R) - 39,198,755 (40.7%) and 159 electoral votes (19 states carried)

Ross Perot/Pat Choate (Reform) - 8,085,402 (8.4%) and 0 electoral votes

2000 Democratic presidential primaries

Al Gore - 10,626,568 (75.80%)

Bill Bradley - 2,798,281 (19.96%)

Lyndon LaRouche - 323,014 (2.30%)

Unpledged - 238,870 (1.70%)

United States presidential election, 2000

George W. Bush/Dick Cheney (R) - 50,460,110 (47.9%) and 271 electoral votes (30 states carried)

Al Gore/Joe Lieberman (D) - 51,003,926 (48.4%) and 266 electoral votes (20 states and D.C. carried)

Absention - 1 electoral votes (faithless elector)

Ralph Nader/Winona DaLuke (Green) - 2,883,105 (2.7%) and 0 electoral votes

Pat Buchanan/Ezola B. Foster (Reform) - 449,225 (0.4%) and 0 electoral votes

Harry Browne/Art Olivier (Libertarian) - 384,516 (0.4%) and 0 electoral votes

Family

Gore had an elder sister, Nancy Gore Hunger. She died of lung cancer in 1984.

Gore is married to Tipper Gore. They have four children: Karenna (born August 6, 1973), married to Andrew "Drew" Schiff; Kristin Cusack (born June 5, 1977), married to Paul Cusack; Sarah Lee (born January 7, 1979), married to Taiwanese-American businessman Bill Lee (李君偉); and Albert III (born October 19, 1982). The Gores also have two grandchildren: Wyatt Gore Schiff (born July 4, 1999) and Anna Hunger Schiff (born August 23, 2001). Sarah is currently a medical student at University of California, San Francisco. Albert works as associate publisher of the philanthropic Good magazine.

The Gores reside in Nashville, Tennessee, and own a small farm near Carthage; they attend New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Carthage. In late 2005 the Gores bought a condominium at San Francisco's St. Regis.

See also

• Florida election recount
• United States presidential election in Florida, 2000
• Bush v. Gore

Bibliography

• Gore, Al (2007). The Assault on Reason. New York: Penguin. ISBN 1594201226.
• Gore, Al (2006). An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We can do about it. New York: Rodale Books. ISBN 1594865671.
• Gore, Al (2002). Joined at the Heart: The Transformation of the American Family. ISBN 0805074503. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Gore, Al (2002). The Spirit of Family. ISBN 0805068945. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Gore, Al (2001). From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less. ISBN 158963571X.
• Gore, Al (1998). Common Sense Government: Works Better & Costs Less: National Performance Review (3rd Report). ISBN 0788139088.
• Gore, Al (1997). Businesslike Government: lessons learned from America's best companies. ISBN 0788170538. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Gore, Al (1992). Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Purpose. Earthscan. ISBN 0618056645.
• Transcript: Former Vice President Gore's Speech on Constitutional Issues, January, 2006
• Transcript of Al Gore's speech at the Sierra Summit, September 9, 2005
• Remarks of Former Vice President Al Gore to the Democratic National Convention, 2004
• Transcript: Former Vice President Al Gore:Matching our Nation's Economic Course to Our Current Realities — Brookings Institution, October, 2002
• Transcript: Gore remarks on Florida vote certification, November 27, 2000
• The Digital Earth: Understanding our planet in the 21st Century, by Vice President Al Gore, Given at the California Science Center, Los Angeles, California, on January 31, 1998.
• The Climate Change Action Plan. Washington, DC: The White House, October, 1993 (with William Clinton).
• News briefs — Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., talks about the environment — Letter to the Editor, Science World, 3 September 1993.
• Earth's Fate Is the No. 1 National Security Issue - Washington Post, 14 May 1989

External links

• Official website
• Legislation Sponsored by Senator Gore — Library of Congress
• Al Gore at IMDb
• News stories & commentary — New York Times
• Al Gore Charlie Rose interviews
• Gore interview part 2 on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos
• Al Gore eco money