IT WAS BAD enough when the Bush administration adopted wholesale the recommendations of big oil, coal companies, and the utilities in drawing up its energy policy for the United States. Now the administration is trying to extend US corporate influence to the international arena by blackballing the scientist who has led the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1996.
Robert Watson is a respected atmospheric scientist who has become a pariah to energy industry officials opposed to measures aimed at reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of vehicles and power plants. His organization, a panel of 2,500 experts from around the world working under the auspices of the United Nations, reported last year last ''there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.'' The report predicted that average global temperatures will rise by 3 to 10 degrees by the end of the century.
This was such an unwelcome message to the Bush administration that it asked the National Academy of Sciences for a second opinion. The National Academy came back with a report saying that the IPCC, which is highly regarded for its science-based assessments of global warming, was right. The more evidence there is of man-made sources of greenhouse gases, the greater the pressure on the Bush administration to curb carbon dioxide emissions, as candidate George Bush promised to do in 2000.
After taking office, Bush reneged on that pledge and renounced the emission reduction requirements of the Kyoto treaty. Now the Bush approach is to kill the global warming messenger, or at least Watson. The administration is favoring an Indian engineer and economist, Rajendra Pachauri, a vice chairman of the IPCC. Representatives of more than 100 countries will meet in Geneva later this month to choose a chairman.
Industry's effectiveness at pulling the strings of Bush officials is evident from a document obtained by the Natural Resources Defense Council. The Bush team had just come to office last year when ExxonMobil sent over a memorandum that criticized Watson and asked, ''Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the US?'' Last week other lobbyists for the auto and energy industries met with State Department officials to encourage it to favor Pachauri, as it finally did.
In a letter to the State Department on Watson's behalf, Daniel Lashof of the Natural Resources Defense Council said: ''The industry effort to block the reappointment of Dr. Watson is a thinly veiled attempt to undermine the effectiveness of the IPCC as a body that produces high quality, objective assessments.'' If representatives from other countries do not want both American and global climate policy made in Houston and Detroit, they will reelect Watson.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company
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