In the award announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee states that it

“endorses Obama’s appeal that ‘Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.’”

I can only imagine how much fun the communications team had in picking out an Obama quotation to throw right back at him.

The Nobel Committee is forcing Obama to live up to expectations – both those of the Prize and of the people who voted for him and the people around the world who celebrated his election.

One key expectation is action on climate change.

Obama’s work “to improve the international climate… to strengthen international bodies such as the UN” is lauded both in the initial award announcement and again during the press conference. Of course creating a new international climate is mostly intended to praise Obama’s general diplomatic work (read: to diss Bush), but I do believe throwing the words “climate” and “UN” very close to one another on more than one occasion is also a clear call to Obama to be at COP-15 in Copenhagen. And when I say “be at COP-15″ I don’t just mean showing his face; no, I mean bringin’ it to Copenhagen.

Onward to Copenhagen!

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”

Perhaps the Committee would have been better served to give this award to Obama retroactively, for the year 2008, when he actually garnered said hope. But while hope for change (read: world public opinion poll numbers on Obama’s favorability) might have fallen in recent months, we still have hope in our small window of opportunity to enact a bold, binding, and just treaty on climate change mitigation and adaptation in December in Copenhagen.

Obama said he will accept the award as a “call to action.” Let’s make sure that in accepting, he is hearing the call in the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s statement to meet “the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.”  You can add your voice to this call to action by signing the Climate Countdown Petition.

To accept the Peace Prize on December 10 in Oslo, Obama will have to fly to Scandinavia in December anyway; he might as well make the most of those greenhouse gas emissions by spending two weeks in Copenhagen!