Al Gore is awesome and should be our President. You know, if not for the Supreme Court or any number of other reasons.

But, if we can't have him in charge of our country, why not let him dedicate his post-political life to one of the most pressing causes of our time: global warming. It is through this issue that he now commands much respect.

Today in Oslo, Norway, Al accepted his Nobel Peace Prize. In doing so, he delivered one of the most remarkable speeches I've ever read. The full text of the speech can be found here.

I'd like to highlight a short passage of his speech, recorded after the break:

As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, "Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice." Either, he notes, "would suffice."

But neither need be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet.

We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge.

These were not 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; that Providence could be trusted to do for us what we would not do for ourselves.

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, citizens of every class and condition who were ready to stand against the threat once asked to do so. Our enemies in those times calculated that free people would not rise to the challenge; they were, of course, catastrophically wrong.

Now comes the threat of climate crisis - a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?

I had such a hard time selecting a passage to post here, as I find the whole of the speech simply breathtaking. The urgency, clarity, and conviction of his words, issued on one of the grandest of stages, should make everyone stop and consider the ramifications of what he speaks. Indeed it is our time, and the price for not answering the bell will be catastrophic.

Al Gore, once the wooden man of the campaign trail as the mainstream media would report, is now reinvented. He speaks with passion. He attempts to bridge gaps. And he is a champion for one of the most basic and important causes: our world, straight up.

Since the disaster of the aftermath of the 2000 election, Al Gore and George W. Bush have been going in different directions. One has cemented his legacy as one of the most disastrous world leaders ever; the other has risen in a way many would have never expected, to be one of the greatest leaders of his generation.

Today is his day. But he would assert that today, and tomorrow, and every day going forward belongs to our planet and to us, as we all work to create change.