Angry in the Great White North

Rajendra Pachauri, the current chair of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has had an opinion piece published in The Hindu.

That Pachauri has long since abandoned the idea of being in charge of a body that provides information to decision makers is not news.  Pachauri has for some time been advocating for specific actions to be taken. 

But in this piece, Pachauri calls for grassroots action.  Does he know governments are no longer buying what he's trying to sell?

The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was produced in the year 2007, and highlighted, on the basis of careful observations extending over a long period of time, that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level."

In the light of these projected changes in climate and their various impacts, it was hoped that the Copenhagen Conference of the Parties (CoP) would be able to arrive at a binding agreement to ensure that all countries of the world take effective action, firstly in agreeing to reduce global emissions of GHGs with a sense of urgency.

One of the favourable outcomes of the Copenhagen conference last December was the acceptance of a 2 degrees 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, or even abandoning the notion of global warming being a man-made phenomenon (assuming it is happening at all). 

Pachauri, therefore, wants "urgent grassroots action".

Presumably "urgent grassroots action" only applies to democracies.  Grassroots action is a one-way ticket to a gulag in many countries ruled by thuggish dictators.

This call for "urgent grassroots action" flies in the face of the IPCC charter:

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.  It avoids removing him because the IPCC report is a hopeless mess, since to do so would require admitting that the IPCC report (and by extension, the entire theory of man-made global warming) is a hopeless mess.

For global warming alarmists who hope that throwing Pachauri under the bus will staunch the hemorrhaging of credibility being suffered by the global warming movement, this could be break they've been waiting for.

A version of this post is now an op-ed piece under the National Post byline.