The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore yesterday thrust the former vice-president — and the Norwegian committee that honoured him — into the heart of the 2008 US election battle.

Mr Gore, who shares the $1.5 million (£737,000) prize with the United Nations climate change panel, was made a Nobel peace laureate for raising awareness about global warming through books, lecture tours and the Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth.

The award citation described him as “probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted”.

The decision has inevitably been interpreted as a rebuke to President Bush, who beat Mr Gore by the narrowest of margins to win the White House in 2000 and has since opposed binding international agreements for reducing carbon emissions.

Ole Danbolt Mjøs, the prize committee chairman, insisted that Mr Gore’s award was not aimed directly at the Bush Administration. He then added: “We would encourage all countries, including the big countries . . . to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming. The bigger the powers, the better that they come in front of this.”

The last American to win the prize was former president Jimmy Carter in 2002, when the committee chairman Gunnar Berge called it “a kick in the leg” to Mr Bush for planning a war in Iraq.

Mr Gore yesterday appeared at a brief press conference quoting African proverbs and promising to use his new status to hasten action and “elevate global consciousness about the challenges we face”. In an earlier statement, he said the climate crisis was a moral and spiritual challenge for humanity — “not a political issue”.

That did not stop Democratic presidential candidates stampeding to congratulate him and condemn Mr Bush’s stance on the issue. Within minutes of the announcement in Oslo, 5.15am in Washington, John Edwards was saying that Mr Gore’s leadership “stands in stunning contrast to the failure of the current Administration”. He added that the award “shines a bright light on the most inconvenient truth of all — the selection of George Bush as President.”

As dawn broke, Barack Obama was praising Mr Gore’s courage to “challenge the sceptics in Washington”, while the home page of Hillary Clinton’s website featured a photo of Mr Gore in Socratic pose alongside a headline saying: “CONGRATULTIONS!” There was a flurry of speculation that the former vice-president could be given a post as a roving environmental ambassador if the Clintons were restored to the White House.

Such adulation from fellow Democrats would swiftly turn sour if Mr Gore used the peace award as a springboard into the 2008 presidential race himself. This week supporters of a “draft Gore” movement took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times begging him to make another run for the White House. But long-time advisers reiterated that a Gore candidacy was extremely unlikely. “I don’t think he’s going to run,” said Carter Eskew. “Technically, he hasn’t ruled it out. But I can tell you he’s making no moves and no sounds to indicate to me that he’s going to run.”

At the White House, Mr Bush’s spokesman insisted, possibly through gritted teeth, that the President shared Mr Gore’s joy — but had no plans to speak to him. “Of course he’s happy for Vice-President Gore,” he said. “He’s happy for the international panel on climate change scientists who also shared the peace prize.”

Those US conservatives still refuse to accept scientific evidence that global warming is man-made — or even a problem, were yesterday predictably furious, with what they regard as another political statement by the Norwegian committee.

Some highlighted this week’s ruling by a British High Court judge that the film was prone to “alarmism” and contained scientific errors, while Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing talk-show host, declared that the committee had long since “rendered themselves pure, 100 per cent joke”.

One internet blog suggested that Mr Gore’s award was part of a pattern of previous prize winners ranging from Yassir Arafat to Mr Carter — “a subset of cosmopolitan frauds, fakers, murderers, thieves, and no-accounts going back about 20 years”.

Critics say the remit of the peace prize, which now includes democracy, the elimination of poverty, and improving the environment, has become too wide.

But Jan Egeland, a Norwegian former senior UN official for humanitarian affairs, defended the decision of his countrymen yesterday who decided Mr Gore’s work on climate change had “reduced a threat “to the security of mankind”.

He said: “It is a question of war and peace. We’re already seeing the first climate wars, in the Sahel belt of Africa.”

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