Gore, Limbaugh, Watt-Clouter, and Morales

Nobel committee announces Peace Prize winner.  A year for environmentalists?The secretive Nobel committee never comments on specific nominations for the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize, so interested parties must rely on the people and organizations who nominate people for clues to who might be in the running. The issue of the environment connects the early front runners, former United States vice president Al Gore and a Canadian environmentalist from Nunavut, Sheila Watt-Cloutier. As always, the line-up of nominees includes controversial individuals.

By the 2007 closing date in Feb 2007, 181 nominations had been received. Forty-six of the nominees are organizations.

During eight years as US vice-president, Gore pushed for climate measures, including the Kyoto treaty. Since leaving office in 2001 he has campaigned worldwide on the issue, producing a documentary on climate change, "An Inconvenient Truth," as part of his mission.

Watt-Cloutier has worked on a range of social and environmental issues affecting the Inuit indigenous people of Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia. She has focused in recent years on global climate change. She says the effects are already evident in Inuit regions, with softening ice, streams made torrential and dangerous by melting ice and the northward migration of animals for which the Inuit have no names.

The most controversial figures include Rush Limbaugh, a nationally syndicated radio talk host and right-wing icon in the United States, Malaysia's former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Limbaugh is best known for his support of the Republican US administration and Iraq War, his vociferous disdain for environmentalism, his support for the death penalty and his spell of much-headlined addition to painkillers.Comment:  Limbaugh is also known for his racist remarks, including ones about Indians.