Pachauri to Obama: "This Is a Moment When Leadership Is Required"

As President-elect Barack Obama spoke via video to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Governors' Global Climate Summit last week, assuring international leaders that he intends to re-establish the U.S. leadership role in climate change, many environmentalists around the world applauded. Among other promises, Obama pledged to work to reduce emissions sharply by 2020, despite the financial crisis.

His government would set strong annual targets, he said, that set the country on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and cut them a further 80% by 2050. Under the Kyoto Protocol, 37 developed nations have agreed to cut emissions by 5% below 1990 levels by 2012.

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, an economist, engineer, environmental scientist, and head of the IPCC for the past six years, is also applauding signals coming from the new U.S. administration. However, with major items sure to dominate the political agenda in the White House during 2009 – the global financial crisis, the potential withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and an increasingly unstable war in Afghanistan to mention but a few – Pachauri underlines that Obama's climate change aspirations need true leadership.

It will be hard but doable

"I think it is admirable that President-elect Obama wants to change the U.S. climate change positions internationally. It's clearly an indication that he will take action. Focusing on 2020 is what we have in the Bali Roadmap. One would have to see the exact cuts and goals he sets. I think it will be a very hard task, without a doubt – but certainly doable. The present situation in the U.S. and internationally definitely presents both challenges and opportunities. And a way out of the current mess is filled with fresh opportunities," Pachauri says.

One of the challenges Pachauri foresees is the political situation internally in the United States, which has prevented the country from acceding to mandatory greenhouse gas emissions cuts as required under the Kyoto Protocol.

"This is a moment when leadership is required. Undoubtedly, there are voices who don't want change, and they are not going away. There is, for example, the car industry that no longer holds a position of strength, and one could expect that they will try to pull in another direction. However, there are those who support action and I believe that the fact that Obama got elected clearly shows that there is support for him and his ideas. It is not like he will not have support. But it is here where leadership can make an enormous difference," Pachauri says.

Don't follow the old path

He points to the fact that the financial crisis on a global level truly offers an opportunity.

"There is no reason to follow the same path followed in past. There are enormous benefits in reducing emissions, and we have examples of several countries that the U.S. can learn from – Japan and Germany. They have both implemented a renewable economy on a large scale, and if anything else this move have created jobs and reinvigorated the economy," Pachauri argues.

This is also why Dr. Pachuari is particularly happy with the fact that Obama has stated that one way of changing the U.S.' still oil-, coal-, and nuclear-powered economy into one more reliant on renewable energies will be through creating new green jobs.

"This is a way to revive the economy and find means to create a green economy, which is both admirable and good."

Change will come from the people

Though strong leadership will be the way forward for a global climate deal the chairman also puts a great deal of faith into us – ordinary people from Madras to Madrid and from Bangalore to Beijing.

"Policy makers are quite focused on the problem with climate change today. Only very few believe actions do not need to be taken. Leadership by the U.S. can make a lot of difference to convince the rest and ensure that others will follow. We have seen that it is mostly a lack of awareness or understanding which have created this skepticism. This has happened on a large scale: People are much better informed all over the world, and they will create the change, because at the end of the day leaders will do what the people want," says Pachauri.

And informing the people through reports like the Fourth Assessment report, like the newly released International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook 2008, and like a new study led by NASA's James Hansen is the way forward, he believes. Though the latter two reports paint an even direr picture of the future than the latest IPCC report, they are not, the chairman notes, the ultimate science. He underlines that behind the IPCC stands 2,500 international scientists, and this is why we can trust the balance in the scientific results.

Concerning COP15, the chairman has high hopes for the possibility of forging a global deal in Copenhagen in December next year – especially with strong U.S. leadership.