U.N. climate chief turns carbon to green

Nobel Peace Prize winners Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri on the balcony of Grand Hotel, Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2007

NEW YORK – Further examination of U.N. climate chief Rajendra K. Pachauri's resume shows more extensive international business relationships through which he stands to profit from global-warming activism.

WND reported last week a Mumbai-based Indian multinational conglomerate with business ties to Pachauri, the chairman since 2002 of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, stands to make several hundred million dollars in European Union carbon credits simply by closing a steel-production facility in Britain with the loss of 1,700 jobs.

Now, the head of the Asian Development Bank, Haruhiko Kuroda, is warning governments that failure to reach a deal at the U.N. Climate Summit in Copenhagen could lead to a collapse of the carbon market. He says rich countries, therefore, should commit up to $100 billion to finance a climate deal that would benefit the developing world.

TRENDING: Raison d'être

Pachauri chairs the Asian Development Bank Advisory Group on Climate Change.

Christopher Booker, author of "The Real Global Warming Disaster," estimates that carbon permits traded in global exchanges such as the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading System, now worth an estimated $126 billion, will soon be valued in the trillions, "making carbon the most valuable traded commodity in the world," outpacing even oil.

"Forget Big Oil: the new world power is Big Carbon," writes Booker. "Truly it has been a miracle of our time that they have managed to transform carbon dioxide, a gas upon which all life on earth depends, into a 'pollutant,' worth more than diamonds, let alone oil."

If the U.N. meeting succeeds to impose a new cap-and-trade scheme on the world economy, Pachauri and others working within the environmental industries emerging out of global-warming activism stand to make millions personally.

The following are some of the carbon-related business ties Pachauri has established:

• Another member of the Asian Development Bank Advisory Group on Climate Change is the U.N. Millennium Project economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, who serves as director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University; the Earth Institute has established the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, with Pachauri serving as the group's board chairman.
• In 1974, the Tata Group provided the financial resources to found the Tata Energy Research Institute, a policy organization headquartered in New Delhi, India, of which Pachauri has been chairman since the group was formed.
• Continued business ties between TERI and Tata are demonstrated by a press announcement on the TERI website dated Feb. 4. Jairam Ramesh, the Indian minister of state for commerce and industry as well as minister of state for power, announced a joint venture with TERI and Tata power to extract and use carbon dioxide for the propagation of microalgae.
• Emil Salim, an adviser to Indonesia's president on environmental issues, is a member of the Asia-Pacific Forum for Environment and Development, with Pachauri serving as a member of the steering committee. The forum sponsors the "Partnership Initiatives for Knowledge Network and Capacity Building," with TERI as a major partner. Salim also chairs the Asian Energy Institute set up in 1989 by TERI, with financial assistance from the Indian government.

"All roads lead to Pachauri," declares Richard North of the blog EU Referendum.

North has also pointed out that Pachauri is a strategic adviser to several private-investment and venture-capital firms, including Pegasus Capital Advisors LP in New York; Sederian Ventures in the Netherlands established by Tendris Holding that is part-owned by the electronics giant Philips; and Houston-based biotech firm GloriOil, where Pachauri serves on the board of advisers.

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Among the many government and industry affiliations Pachauri lists on his biography are the following: serving as an honorary member of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and Environment; a member of the advisory group for the Rockefeller Foundation; and an adviser to the international advisory board of Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan.

"By fingering carbon dioxide as the primary driver of (Anthropogenic Global Warming), the IPCC has been responsible for creating the market in carbon trading," writes James Delingpole in the Telegraph of London. "Dr. Pachauri was, of course, the lead author on the IPCC's second report, which paved the way to Kyoto – which in turn ushered in the first carbon-trading schemes."

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