Pachauri is Corrupt or what?!

Written By: Gagan Preet Singh

Glaciergate: The report on IPCC that has alarmed the world in the real sense about climate changes. It is astonishing that one poor citation of a number in a 938-page report has shaken the IPCC’s standing. The passage on Himalayan glaciers in the report says that these glaciers could disappear by 2035. This one number has become the battle cry of the sceptics and has made the entire report suspect. MURARI LAL, the author to this article says he was permitted to use ‘grey literature’. So, he cited that the glaciers could melt by ’35 because a Chinese Scholar had forecasted such a thing. On the other hand, the alleged father of ’35 warning, Syed Iqbal says it’s ‘New Scientist’s’ (A Journal) fault. He only estimated that glaciers could melt in 40-50 years if not checked. So has ‘New Scientist’ snowballed the issue!?

The ‘glaciergate’ turned into ‘Pachaurigate’ as the IPCC chairman Dr. R.K. Pachauri initially responded to the highlighting of the error in a cavalier manner. When a humble apology was in order and also an assurance to examine its reports for any more of such errors, the IPCC response came late and still stressed that all was well except this one error.

But IPCC responded only on 20 January, by when the odd shout about the mistake had snowballed into a media hysteria. The fact that just a week earlier Teri (A pro-environment organization based in New Delhi) had got funding from Carnegie foundation on the basis of the same alarmist and wrong data brought a landslide of accusations of conflict of interest on Pachauri’s door.

Critics allege that Teri has gone global since Pachauri became the chairman of IPCC in 2002. Pachauri dismisses the conflict of interest allegation and says that Teri’s growth is just rewards for its work.

Pachauri is also accused of trading awards. Pachauri is accused of giving away the UAE’s Zayed Future Energy Prize to Toyota’s hybrid car, Prius, earlier this month, because Toyota has contributed $80,000 to Teri.

However, Pachauri sees the hand of lobbyists hired by polluting corporations in the West behind the attacks on him and the IPCC.

In fact, the climate sceptics in Australia and the UK have called the Kyoto Protocol as the world’s largest wealth redistribution scheme ever. The African nations’ demand for $100 billion from the developed countries has clearly rattled the West. Bloggers in the UK have called the funding of Teri’s glacier research by the EU as a swindling of the British taxpayers.

People are still optimistic about businesses’ willingness to continue on the path to a green world economy. “Business will not slow down its investment in green technologies as we are almost certainly moving to a lower carbon world.” Acc to KPMG, corporate conduct will be linked to the government’s reaction to the controversy.