Gore, Pachauri love-hate relationship

About five years ago, Gore and Pachauri had a spat over the latter’s election as IPCC boss but the Nobel Prize has apparently burried the hatchet, reports Chetan Chauhan. Read on...

Updated on: Oct 20, 2007, 12:51:34 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Former US vice president Al Gore and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) led by Dr RK Pachauri, were jointly declared winners of this year’s Nobel Peace prize.

About five years ago, Gore and Pachauri had a spat over the latter’s election as IPCC boss.

In 2002, Gore had termed Pachauri as “let’s drag our feet” candidate and anti-American when he was backed by the US administration for the top post of IPCC.

In a signed article published in the New York Times, Gore had accused the US government of backing Pachauri to dilute the global effort on climate change for small “political gains”.

Expressing his deep disappointment at Gore’s derogatory remarks, Pachauri had hit back with a letter to the editor published in the NYT, asking the real Gore to stand up.

In his letter he had referred to how Gore had praised him in 1991. He had said: “Pachy (as Pachauri is popularly called) is one person in the world who can bring us all here…. He is known all over the community of concerned men and women as someone with the intellect and the heart”.

Pachauri had ended his letter by saying that what Gore says today holds no value tomorrow.

There was also some intended pun against Gore when Pachauri termed his rival in election Dr Robert T. Watson as his protégé. Pachauri won with 76 votes in his favour as against 49 for Watson, who was backed by Al Gore.

In five years, IPCC came out with four assessment reports but Al Gore was not part of even one of them, even though Gore had been creating awareness about climate change impact since 2001. “Al Gore was never actively associated with IPCC,” said a scientist associated with IPCC during Pachauri’s tenure.

Nobel Prize has apparently ended the hatchet. Pachauri received a congratulatory call from Al Gore immediately after the Nobel Prize was announced. Pachauri now terms Al Gore as a remarkable individual. He further says that they have known each other for over two decades and that he is looking forward to working with him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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