The Pachauri affair

FROM-Quadrant Online

by John Izzard

As the murk surrounding the arcane world of the global warming industry begins to clear, two intriguing questions emerge. Does our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd realise just who he, and his Climate Change minister Penny Wong, are associating with at the IPCC. And is the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, asking the right questions?

Largely ignored in the local Australian media was an extraordinary story published in London’s Daily Telegraph two weeks ago which accused the Chairman of the International Panel on Climate Change, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, ‘of making a fortune from his links with “carbon trading” companies.’ The Daily Telegraph’s revelations are explosive to say the least.

The drama began in Copenhagen during the last days of COP15 when Senator Steven Fielding and Lord Monckton thrust a letter into the hands of Dr Pachauri as he finished an address on the perils of climate change. The open letter challenged the scientific honesty of a graph used prominently in the IPCC 2007 Report, and used that day by Dr Pachauri in his lecture. The letter also asked the Chairman of the IPCC why the 2007 IPCC report failed to record Pachauri’s interest in so many organizations and companies that stood to profit from the IPCC report.

Key to the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph’s allegations are a list of companies in which Dr Pachauri is involved at the most senior level. ‘The original power base from which Dr Pachauri has built up his worldwide network of influence over the past decade is the Delhi-based Tata Energy Research Institute, of which he became director in 1981 and director–general in 2001. Now renamed The Energy Research Institute, TERI was set up in 1974 by India’s largest privately-owned business empire, the Tata Group, with interests ranging from steel, cars and energy to chemicals, telecommunications and insurance (and now best known in the UK as the owner of Jaguar, Land Rover, Tetley Tea and Corus, Britain’s largest steel company’, the Daily Telegraph stated.

The article went on to say that when Dr Pachauri took over running TERI his own interests centred on oil and coal. He was, until 2003, a director of India Oil, that country’s largest commercial enterprise. Until this year he was a director of India’s National Thermal Power Generation Corporation, the country’s largest electricity producer.

According to the Daily Telegraph Dr Pachauri set up, in Texas in 2005, GloriOil a company specialising in technology to extract the remaining reserves from depleted oil fields. The paper also claims that TERI, a so called ‘research institute’ has become involved with interests in ‘every kind of renewable or sustainable technology’, many of which the Tata Group has heavily invested, such as in a proposed US$1.5 billion wind farm project.

TERI has now extended its empire with TERI Europe, based in London, which Dr Pachauri is a trustee with Sir John Houghton, former head of the UK Met Office, and a major player in the IPCC. TERI Europe is currently running a project on bio-energy.

As the Daily Telegraph article unfolds it becomes clear (or does it) the extent in which this Indian ‘research institute’, through Dr Pachauri, has become the binding element that seems to have managed to combine science, politics and commercial prospects, by using global-warming-pandemic-hysteria.

In Australia we like to boast of ‘the separation of powers’. Until recently most people believed that the IPCC and the scientists involved in the global-warming come-climate-change were concentrating in ‘science’. Although many were suspicious of what was going on, it has only been since Copenhagen that the reality of the global warming/climate change conspiracy has become visible. It now seems that what was suspected is now being revealed as a reality - that science, politics and commercial interests, are feeding off each other.

A simple example, given by the Daily Telegraph, is the story of Corus Steel, the UK’s largest steel producer, owned by the Tata Group. Tata is going to transfer its Corus Steel production from Teesside in the UK, to Orissa in India at the cost of 1,700 British jobs. In the process Tata will gain up to US$2.2 billion in ‘carbon credits’.

The above is what might be called a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) which benefit countries like China and India. India has 1455 CDM projects in operation worth US$33 billion. Many of these are facilitated by Tata Group. The implications for Australian industry, as shown by the Corus Steel experience, seems to be lost on the Rudd government.

As the ‘carbon’ market expands, a key player, if not the world leader, is going to be the Chicago Climate Exchange. Guess who serves on the ‘advisory board’ of that exchange - the ever busy Dr Pachauri. In 2007 the good doctor became a member of the advisory board of Siderian, a venture capital company specialising in ‘sustainable technologies’, based in San Francisco. In 2008 Dr Pachauri became advisor to Credit Suisse and then the Rockefeller Foundation. He also joined the board of Nordic Glitnir Bank and he is chairman of Indochina Sustainable Fund trying to raise US$200 billion. An he’s there with Deutsche Bank.

Incredibly, Dr Pachauri is now a director of the International Risk Governance Council in Geneva, set up by two of Europe’s largest electricity producers. He has joined the New York Investment fund Pegasus as a ‘strategic advisor’ and he is chairman of the advisory board of the Asia Development Bank. His sphere of influence extends to being head of Yale University’s Climate and Energy Institute, Director of the Japanese Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, and advisor to Toyota and policy advisor to SNCF, Frances state-owned railway.

The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph articles state that, ‘One subject the talkative Dr Pachauri remains silent on, however, is how much money he is paid for all these important posts, which must run into millions of dollars. Not one of the bodies he works for publishes his salary or fees, and this notably includes the UN, which refuses to reveal how much we all pay him as one of its most senior officials.

In an interview with The Times of India Dr Pachauri said, ‘My conscience is clear and that is why I am cool towards these allegations.’

When contacted about the letter presented to Dr Pachauri, a spokesman for Senator Fielding said the Senator was distancing himself from the Monckton Copenhagen letter.

Lets hope no one else does.



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