http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0405-07.htm
Published on Friday,
April 5, 2002 by Salon
Watson, Come Here, I Want to Fire You
Angry at His Predictions of Global Warming, the
Bush Administration and the Energy Industry Strive to Unseat a
Prominent Scientist
by Damien Cave
CAPTION:
"Robert Watson, left, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, answers questions at a January 2001 news
conference."
"I don't think we know the solution to global warming yet,
and I don't think we've got all the facts." -- George W.
Bush,
second presidential debate.
So far, President Bush
has practiced the skepticism that he preaches.
Along with creating an energy plan widely perceived to be dictated
by the energy industry, he's done little to increase automobile
fuel efficiency and has rejected the Kyoto Protocol -- an international
attempt to reverse global warming by cutting down on fossil fuel
use
and its attendant carbon dioxide emissions.
The administration's attempt to oust Robert B. Watson from his
post
as the chairman of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) -- as first reported by the New York Times
on April 2 -- thus
comes as little surprise. Since taking up his unpaid post six
years ago
at the IPCC -- an international conglomeration of 2,500 scientists
who study climate change -- Watson, a forceful and articulate
speaker, has overseen a series of influential annual
reports
that connect climate change to man's activities. Watson also
suffers from the Clinton taint, having spent the early '90s
in the White House's office of Science and Policy.
Some members of the
energy industry would also like Watson
to stand down. In a letter that ExxonMobil included in a
package of documents sent to the White House last year,
Watson was accused of leaking drafts of IPCC reports
in order to further his personal environmental agenda.
The letter also asked, "Can Watson be replaced now at
the request of the U.S.?"
The Bush administration
didn't return calls for comment.
ExxonMobil says that the letter was not written by anyone
at the company. "It was taken from a fax of third-party
materials," says Tom Cirigliano, a spokesman for ExxonMobil,
who also said the company has no idea who actually wrote
the letter. "None of the attachments were written
by ExxonMobil. We have no position on Watson or
anyone else who might head up the panel."
ExxonMobil's denial
of authorship notwithstanding,
according to environmentalists, the letter and the
Bush administration's rejection of Watson represent
a new apex of energy industry gall and influence.
"This campaign
by ExxonMobil went far beyond 'Here are
some people to fill empty spaces,'" says David Doniger,
a policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council,
which released copies to the press April 3 after obtaining
the letter through a Freedom of Information Act request.
"This was an attempt to remove people who are not part
of the [American] political process. It's transparently
an effort to disrupt the organization and destroy its
effectiveness. It's just another window into the mostly
secret relationship between the big energy companies,
who are the puppeteers, and the administration,
who does what they tell them."
Even without American
support, Watson could still retain
his position. The IPCC allows for nominations to come
from any country, and Watson maintains a high level of
support internationally, says Doniger. It's also possible
for Watson to share the chairmanship with the only other
serious candidate nominated so far, Rajendra K. Pachauri,
an Indian engineer and economist.
Salon caught up with
Dr. Watson in a Bonn hotel room
after midnight to discuss global warming and the Bush
administration freeze-out.
When and how
did you find out that the Bush administration
didn't support you?
I've been hearing over
the last couple months that
they were making a decision about whether to support
me or not, and I've known that because other governments
from around the world have been actually coming to the
State Department to show support for me, and each time
they've been in, the U.S. government's position was that
they hadn't made a decision.
Until yesterday. They
never told me in person; I was phoned
by a number of people once the news came out. I still haven't
been told officially and don't expect to be told officially.
To what extent
do you think the decision was based on pressure
from companies like ExxonMobil?
To be honest, I'm not
on the inside. This was a decision
made by the U.S. government and they didn't consult me on it,
and so the degree to which they made the decision based on
lobbying, I really don't know. I have no idea.
So what happens
next?
It will be interesting
as it plays out because I know that
there's a very significant number of both developed and
developing countries that will support my reelection.
And indeed, it's a one-country, one-vote election,
so while I haven't got the U.S. vote -- quite clearly
-- there are a large number of countries that will vote
for me. I'm sure there will be a number of countries
that vote for Dr. Pachauri as well, so I don't know
which way the election will go.
Let's talk about your
reputation as an advocate. Those
who oppose your candidacy argue that you push an agenda
of reducing fossil fuel use and that you leak information
in order to further your cause. What's your response?
They're two totally
different things; one is advocacy,
one is the leaking of information.
On the advocacy point,
it depends on what you mean
by advocacy. Every one of my talks have been solidly
based on IPCC material. In fact, I only use slides,
tables, graphs, figures and quotations directly out of
IPCC reports. Obviously, one can be selective,
but I try to be very balanced.
Some people find me
to be -- and this is not me being
egotistical -- a forceful, strong speaker, and therefore
they feel that I'm an advocate. But if anyone analyzes
any of the speeches I've given, they can see that I make
absolutely sure that my slides are available always
to anybody by putting them on a Web
site. So if anyone
wants to check on what I say, they can cross-check it
against the IPCC to see if I've gone beyond what the
international science community has established.
So those who say I'm
an advocate don't want to hear
the message that indeed the earth is warming; that most
of the warming of the last 50 years is attributable
to human activities; that carbon dioxide is the key
human-induced greenhouse gas and that most of it comes
from fossil fuels. There are some people who clearly
don't want to hear that message, but that is the message
of the IPCC, and it's obviously the message I give
when I speak. I also talk about the uncertainties
as well, but if that's advocacy, then by that definition,
I'm guilty.
But I've never advocated
for a particular policy position.
I'm very careful to say that it was the governments of
the world that decided in Kyoto that the science was
compelling, and that therefore, they needed to have
reductions in greenhouse gases.
What I will say, which
is a scientific statement,
is that without reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,
then we would project an increase in the earth's
surface temperature of 1.5 to 1.8 degrees centigrade.
That again is not a policy statement, it's a scientific
statement.
Now, the second issue,
and I swear this on a stack
of Bibles, is one that's absolutely incorrect -- that
I've ever leaked any information prior to the peer
review process. It would be impossible for anyone
to prove that I had. What some people argued in the
industry -- and it's a small number -- is that there
should never be an IPCC presentation until the document
has been absolutely finalized, peer-reviewed and
approved word by word by governments.
That is not the IPCC
position. We write a document,
we send it to 1,000-plus scientists around the world.
Then we send it to experts and government, and they
review it. And then we revise it and we send it to
governments once again for the executive summary,
or what we call the summary for policymakers.
I've been asked a couple
of times, officially
by governments, could I make a presentation at
scientific bodies or in front of ministers.
With each of these presentations, they've been
based on IPCC documents, and in each case, they did
occur before they were finally approved by government.
But they were given after they had been sent to
governments, so all government members in the room
had already got the piece of paper in front of them;
all of industry had the paper in front of them;
and so had the academic community.
The bureau of the IPCC
approved formally -- and
that's the governments again -- each of the
presentations. Their decision was that it was
appropriate as long as the documents had been
distributed.
How much strength
do companies who oppose limits
on greenhouse gases have over policy -- at the IPCC
and in governments?
Exxon and others have
clearly been opposing my chairmanship
of IPCC. To what degree that they're influencing, say,
American government, I don't know. The question that
everyone's asking is to what degree they've influenced
the Cheney energy report, but I have no idea. I have
absolutely no inside information
But how has
the worldwide political environment changed
since Bush took office? Do you feel that the attempt
to do something about global warming has been undermined?
Clearly when Bush was
elected president, there was a
very different message coming out of the White House.
Clinton and Gore were pushing very aggressively a
Kyoto-type protocol and arguing that climate change
was a very serious environmental issue. Obviously,
the Bush administration has a very different take
on the science and the economics; however, in the U.S.
there is also a lot of power held by the Senate.
And in a bipartisan way, the Senate has always been
skeptical about the climate issue.
So from that standpoint,
what we see now is the
Bush administration being very skeptical about the
climate issue, along with a lot of people in the Senate.
And before, we had a proactive administration but a
still skeptical Senate. And that has played out in
the policy arena with the U.S. pulling out of Kyoto.
I actually don't believe,
however, that on the science
there's been any influence. I believe that the Bush
administration is equally committed to good science
as the Clinton-Gore administration. I have seen absolutely
no sign, in any way whatsoever, that the Bush administration
has tried to influence the science or reduced support for it.
In fact, they've made statements that the science is
important, and I've seen no pullback in that.
Your candidacy
is obviously one casualty of this
increased skepticism, if not about the science then
about the policy. But what other effects, if any,
can be tied to it?
The U.S. is the most
important country in the world,
given that it has a huge use of energy and a very high
level of greenhouse gas emissions, and like in many
other issues, the world looks to the U.S. for leadership.
Bush has said that the climate change issue is an important
issue and that Kyoto is flawed, and that's their decision.
It's perfectly fine. I don't play in the policy arena.
But in terms of the
IPCC, I would hope that -- even
though they've come out to support Dr. Pachauri
-- if I were to be re-elected, I would hope that
they continue their strong support of the IPCC.
The IPCC was started
when Bush Sr. was president,
and it got very strong support at that stage.
The support continued under Clinton-Gore. And I would
be optimistic and hopeful that the U.S. would continue
to support the IPCC because it is a body designed
to try to understand what we know about the science,
technology and economics of climate change -- and
the U.S. is very, very important in the IPCC.
The U.S. has been generous
in its contributions
to the trust funds which allow developing countries
to take part in the IPCC process, by paying for
their scientists to attend meetings. It has also
been very, very important in the science. Many of
the scientists that participate in the IPCC are
American scientists. So I would hope that the
U.S. government would continue its very strong
support, independent of whether I'm the chair
or Dr. Pachauri.
Now that you
know it will be a contested election,
what are you planning to do in order to ensure that
you keep the chair?
The answer is nothing,
except I will let people know
that I definitely would like to chair the IPCC.
I'm willing to commit an incredible amount of time
to it. I'm willing to commit to being intellectually
honest. I will strive to get a balance of participation
from developing countries, academia, government
laboratories and industry. In fact, I've given
many speeches recently saying that I want more
industry experts to participate.
I would also hate to
see a divisive vote. The IPCC
has always worked well by consensus, and I would
actually be very, very comfortable if the world
decided that we, Dr. Pachauri and I, were co-chairs.
Most governments would prefer to see a single chair,
but I think there's another possibility that at least
should be given consideration -- and that is to have
both the strength of my knowledge and Dr. Pachauri's
knowledge, someone from a developed and developing
country, in a joint leadership position.
Copyright 2002 Salon.com
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