Enviro-Nutters UN climate boss goes rogue
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01 February 2010
Rajendra Pachauri, the current chair of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has had an opinion piece published in The Hindu.
Pachauri has long since abandoned the notion of the IPCC as a body that provides information to decision makers, and has for some time been advocating specific actions.
But the article, Pachauri calls for grassroots action, suggests he's realized governments are no longer buying what he's trying to sell.
One of the favourable outcomes of the Copenhagen conference last December was the acceptance of a 2°C limit on temperature increase that the countries who are part of the Copenhagen Accord laid down as a target. However, this Accord, which was reached in the final hours of the extended meeting, is not yet universally accepted, and in fact is likely to receive some resistance from a number of countries.
The challenge and opportunity facing human society is, therefore, to launch urgent grassroots action by civil society, business and local governments towards a pattern of sustainable development. National governments and multilateral initiatives would follow inevitably.
So let me get this straight. National governments are not moving fast enough as far as Pachauri is concerned, so he wants "urgent grassroots action". Presumably "urgent grassroots action" only applies to democracies, since it's a one-way ticket to a gulag in many countries. The demand flies in the face of the IPCC charter, which clearly sets out its mandate as a clearing house for scientific information, rather than an activist body promoting specific policies.
The IPCC is a scientific body. It reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters.
Because of its scientific and intergovernmental nature, the IPCC embodies a unique opportunity to provide rigorous and balanced scientific information to decision makers. By endorsing the IPCC reports, governments acknowledge the authority of their scientific content. The work of the organization is therefore policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral, never policy-prescriptive.
How is calling for "urgent grassroots action" even remotely "policy neutral"?
And since when does a representative of the United Nations bypass a national government directly to the citizens of a country, calling on them to...what...defy the law?
I mean, "grassroots action" and "direct action" and phrases like that are often code words for civil disobedience. Or worse.
It could certainly be taken to mean that by people already motivated to do that sort of thing. Pachauri must realize this.
I dare say he's betting on it.
My take? This could be the excuse people will be looking for to remove Pachauri from his post as head of the IPCC. Dumping him has been avoided to date because it requires the IPCC is a mess, and undermining the legitimacy of its claims on the entire theory of man-made global warming.
For global warming alarmists who hope that throwing Pachauri under the bus will staunch the hemorrhaging of their credibility, this could be break they've been waiting for.
