The teflon man

GROUND ZERO

ARMANI FINDS HIS WAY TO KHANNA MARKET

That doesn't paper over the callousness or carelessness

Defending the indefensible is always a tough task. More so when thevultures are circling overhead. Allegations abound against IPCCchairman R K Pachauri - ranging from living in a million dollar homeand wearing $1000 suits. Some of these notions were dispelled in aninterview that he gave to Hindustan Times the other day. My sense isthat the interview was given to clear some of these misconceptionsthat are being used by the foreign press to target Rajendra Pachauri.All that however, does not take away from the shocking errors that heis party to. In fact, Pachauri's glaciergate scam hasgenerated enough heat to melt a few icebergs, if not glaciers. So, inthis interview to HT carried as a flyer on page 1, an attempt was madeto set the record straight by a beleaguered and encircled Pachauri.With the world baying for his blood, and just about everyone rangedagainst him, Pachauri needed crutches. He founda resting place in HT which in any case had turned him into agargantuan sized hero during the Copehagen confabulations. But sinceCopenhagen, Pachauri has been domolished time and again by variouspeople. His tall claims lie in a rubble. His reputation andcredibility in tatters. And by association India's image tarnished. OnThursday, ET had a small story on its inside page. This is what itsaid, "IPCC chairman R K Pachauri has admitted that the panel’scredibility has been damaged by the false claims on the disappearanceof the Himalayan glaciers made in the Fourth Assessment Report. Theclimate panel chief has rebutted claims of further errors, such as theAmazon claim, in the IPCC report, describing it as the work of a“factory” of people “only there to create pinpricks and getattention”. With the IPCC working on the next assessment report, MrPachauri realises the adverse impact of the Himalayan blunder. “Ithink this [glacier] mistake has certainly cost us dear, there’s noquestion about it. Everybody thought that what the IPCC brought outwas the gold standard and nothing could go wrong. But look at thelarger picture, don’t get blinded by this one mistake.” Theacknowledgement that the UN panel had got it wrong on the Himalayanglaciers has proved to be a shot in the arm of climate sceptics."
Finally acceptance of his mistake, but still no resignation in sight. Amazingly,Pachauri remains steadfast in his thinking that while the report has aglaring error, it is not really the end of the world. The sameafternoon, I saw another report filed by agencies on the ET website.The London datelined report said, "Reports indicate that RajendraPachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (IPCC), is under pressure to resign over the error that theIPCC made on the issue of the melting of Himalayan glaciers. DrPachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC), has insisted that he will remain in the post for another fouryears despite having failed to act on a serious error in the body's2007 report. But, according to a report in The Times, John Sauven,director of Greenpeace UK, said that Dr Pachauri should have acted assoon as he had been informed of the error, even though issuing acorrection would have embarrassed the IPCC on the eve of theCopenhagen climate summit. A journalist had told Dr Pachauri severaltimes late last year that glaciologists had refuted the IPCC claimthat Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. Dr Pachauri refusedto address the problem, saying, "I don't have anything to add onglaciers." He suggested that the error would not be corrected until2013 or 2014, when the IPCC next reported. The IPCC issued acorrection and apology on January 20, three days after the error hadmade global headlines.
According to Sauven, "Mistakes will always be made but it's how youhandle those mistakes which affects the credibility of theinstitution. Pachauri should have put his hand up and said 'we made amistake'. It's in these situations that your character and judgment istested. Do you make the right judgment call? He clearly didn't." "TheIPCC needed a new chairman who would hold public confidence byintroducing more rigorous procedures," Sauven said. "The IPCC needs toregain credibility," he added. "If we get a new person in with an openmind, prepared to fundamentally review how the IPCC works, we wouldregain confidence in the organization," he opined. But, Dr Pachauritold Indian television that he believed attacks on him were beingorchestrated by companies facing lower profits because of actionsagainst climate change recommended by the IPCC. "My credibility hasbeen established because I was re-elected chairman in 2008 by all thecountries of the world," he said. "They must have been satisfied withwhat I did in terms of the fourth assessment report (published in2007) because they have given me the mandate of completing the fifthassessment report (to be released over 2013 and 2014) which I intenddoing," he added.
A hard headed Pachauri seems to be consistently shifting goalposts. Bychanging his stance, he is not doing his own or the nation'scredibility any good. The knives are out for him. Strangely the manwho Pachauri's IPCC shared the Nobel Prize with - Al Gore - has keptsilent during this climategate fracas. Now let me rewind a bit -Nature magazine in its 2007 Newsmaker of the Year cover story onPachauri wrote - "On his way to collect his own medal, Gore stopped toshake Pachauri warmly by the hand. Patchy and Al, as theycall each other, get along famously. It is all a far cry from thesituation in 2002, when Pachauri beat Gore’s favoured candidateto run the IPCC in a bitterly fought contest. Immediatelyafterwards, Gore lambasted Pachauri in the pages ofThe New York Times as the “let’s drag our feet candidate”, apatsy put in place to weaken the IPCC as one of various “actsof sabotage” by the new Bush administration. Pachauri hadfought back with a letter of his own to the Times. “In a 1991speech, Mr Gore [referred] to my ‘commitment’, ‘vision’ and‘dedication’ … Will the real Al Gore please stand up?” “He thought Iwas part of some kind of plot,” Pachaurisays. “Maybe he believed I had some sort of deal with theUS administration, that I’d be soft in pushing the truth onclimate change.” If so, he knows better now."
Before the bonhomie Gore had called Pachauri an oil industrystooge and a Bush placeman in the IPCC in a signed letter in the NewYork Times, but now he is keeping mum. Pachauri claims that the'foreign hand' is doing him in. While I see reason in Pachauri's claimthatinternational media is out to destroy him, how does he explain thecarelessness involved in glaciergate. In the same interview to Naturemagazine, 'Patchy' said, “I am not going to rest easy until I havearticulated in every possible forum the need to bring about major structuralchanges in economic growth and development. That’s thereal issue. Climate change is just a part of it."
Now to HT's puff job on the same Pachauri in a little more detail. Thesave Pachauri at your own peril campaign went like this - "The firstthing Rajendra Pachauri does is open his coat lapel and reveal thelabel. It says, `Chhadha and Company', a shop in South Delhi'smiddle-class Khanna Market. As a wag remarked on reading the interview- this was the only revelation in the long winded save Pachauri job.Mind you, that's in response to a now oft-repeated claim, first madeby the UK's Daily Telegraph, that the chairperson of theIntergovenmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), and Nobel Prizewinner with hisorganisation, has a lifestyle that includes wearing thousand-dollarArmani suits. "I paid Rs 2,200 (approximately $480) for my suits,after bargaining my tailor down from Rs 2,500," said Pachauri, 69, whospoke to Hindustan Times in the course of his first wide-ranginginterview to the Indian media after acontroversy over the IPCC's scientific errors, allegations of hisconflicts of interest as chief of New Delhi's The Energy and ResourcesInstitute (TERI), and his lifestyle. Pachauri attributed the attackson him and the IPCC to the work of global lobbies, with "millions,maybe billions" of dollars in funding, who do not accept globalwarming. He singled out two British papers for "running campaigns"against him.
Pachauri quoted the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington DC-basedthink tank as saying 2,300 lobbyists and 700 companies in the US alonewere arrayed against the acceptance of global warming. "All of this isclearly part of the strategy to demolish the science of climate changeand thereby continue to earn their huge profits," said Pachauri. "Theyreally don't want to pay for negative externalities that they areputting on the world through growing consumption and production offossil fuels."
"I've gone to the point of saying people should eat less meat and thatbothers them because they feel I'm questioning their lifestyles, andthey feel it is bringing huge cost on them."
"They feel threatened by the scientific assessments of the IPCC andhold me responsible for what I am saying on the basis of what sciencehas brought out. They went to the extent of referring to me as a Hinduvegetarian. This is slander."
As he has before, Pachauri acknowledged mistakes -- primarily to awrong deadline, 2035, for the melting of Himalayan glaciers -- in theIPCC's fourth assessment report, 2007, a 3,000-page document acceptedby 130 countries that now forms the basis for global policy-making onclimate change. "Their sole objective is to damage the credibility ofIPCC," he said."We're not going to answer these spurious, individual complaints inthe media.
They are coming from only two sources, The Times, London, and The Telegraph."Asked how much the IPCC paid him, Pachauri said "not a single memberof the IPCC gets money". He is only reimbursed for travel expenses, hesaid. Pachauri said he saw no conflict of interest in being chair of theIPCC and being paid by governments or corporations for advice onclimate change, particularly those that profit from fossil fuels, forconsultancy work on behalf of TERI."You know I had relationships withthese (oil) organisations all my life," said Pachauri.
"Whatever we have in the IPCC reports are in the public domain. I'mnot concealing any trade secrets or intellectual property thatsomebody else wants. It is the public's intellectual prop erty. It ison this basis that I advice companies or individuals... where is theconflict of , interest? I don't see that." Referring to his house inDelhi's costliest address, Golf Links, Pachuri said: "I have aninherited house in Golf Links.If you think I should not be living in Golf Links, please get me anice house, and I can think of moving from there. I find it veryconvenient (it's half a km from his office in TERI)."
All very well Mr Pachauri. Point taken, but what about glaciergate?And why weren't inconvenient questions asked by HT journos of R KPachauri on messing up the assessment reports due to callousness andcarelessness. How did a typo creep in which allowed 2350 to become2035? Suppose the BSE or NSE for that matter when it closes the marketgives out the wrong closing of the Sensex or Nifty and similarly errsby giving the wrong prices of certain scrips. Think of theincalculable damage, no, havoc that it will cause to investors. Justan example. Maybe, the goras are gunning for him, but how can hedefend these errors? Yes, he may be living in an inherited house inGolf Links and not wear an Armani suit but instead wears one tailoredin Khanna Market, but how can he defend these mistakes. There is nodefence for the indefensible. The quality of these reports is underscruitny and both Dr V K Raina and Jairam Ramesh have called hisbluff. Oh, yes, both incidentally are Indians, not firangs who arefixated on tarnishing his credo. He will have to go.

(Impact)