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Worldchanging Interview: IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri

Ben Block — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:17:10 +0000

Image credit: Wikipedia

Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, has become among the world's most visible, outspoken voices on fighting climate change. Following a speech at the Worldwatch Institute launch of State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World, Dr. Pachauri stepped aside for a conversation with Worldwatch staff writer Ben Block.

Ben Block: Climate scientists have been making more-severe findings over the 14 months since the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report was released in 2007. What do you think has changed since that assessment?

Rajendra Pachauri: I don't see any changes. I mean, there's always new literature that's coming out, and one should really look at the balance of all the evidence that you get. Certainly a year or two is not a lot, really, for you to come up with a reasoned, objective, and comprehensive assessment of what's happening. We are not in the business of forecasting the weather. We're really projecting climate change.

BB: Based on the lessons you learned from the Fourth Assessment or the events that have transpired since then, how will the next IPCC report be different from previous projects?

RP: One of the things that we're certainly going to focus on is much greater regional [effects] because the impact of climate change has to be essentially studied in the respect of specific locations and regions. Unless we do that, we're only generalizing something that's not factual.

BB: The Fourth Assessment include examples of likely effects in Asia, Africa, and other regions. How will the Fifth Assessment compare?

RP: A great deal depends on the research that's carried out in those locations. One hopes that with all the interest that's been generated on climate change, you get a lot more research out of it in a number of regions in the world that were not covered earlier.

BB: The next report is due to be published in 2014. With many scientists saying that climate change has become more severe since the 2007 assessment, and with the international climate negotiations taking place in Copenhagen this December, do you think a more recent report is needed? 2014 seems like a long time from now.

RP: There's no way you can cut short the process. We have an extremely elaborate procedure designed for a very good reason. It's not easy to go through tens of thousands of pieces of literature and assemble thousands of scientists to come up with a reasonable assessment of what's happening and what's likely to happen. Anything you do in a year or two is going to be suspect. It's not going to be complete. And I don't think it will carry the credibility that a comprehensive assessment of the IPCC actually does.

BB: You don't have an easy job. Is there anyone competing to replace you?

RP: If they do, they're more than welcome.

BB: The IPCC makes estimations on how climate change could be limited to increases of 2 degrees Celsius. How do you feel about this limit - is it too high?

RP: That really has to be seen in relation to what 2 degrees will do to different places of the world. I think Article 2 of the [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change], which essentially highlights the need to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, has to look at "dangerous" in respect to different situations and different regions of the world. You can't have climate science which is uniformly dangerous for the entire world. If you talk to people in locations that are really dangerous, you get response from those people that they are probably close to a state of danger - if they have not already crossed it.

So this whole issue of 2 degrees versus 1 degree or 1.5 degree is something based on a value judgment that essentially relates to what is dangerous, what is a threshold that would define danger in terms of making it almost impossible for some people on this planet not being able to live in those locations. So it's difficult to say if it should be 2 degrees or 1.5 or 1, but this is an issue that needs a great deal of discussion or debate. There's an ethical discussion which should not be ignored at all, and it really hasn't been brought out in the [climate convention] debates.

BB: Have you had a chance to speak with U.S. President-elect Barack Obama?

RP: No... I hope some day in future I get to talk to him.

BB: If Obama were in front of you right now, what would you say?

RP: I would tell him he has the unique opportunity of saving a large part of the human species and several others, because unless the U.S. takes the lead, I'm afraid we will not get an adequate global response. In absence of that, there will obviously be climate change that will go unmitigated. And we're pretty close to the stage where impacts start to turn very serious and very negative.

BB: That's a lot of weight on one man's shoulders.

RP: Well, he ran for the presidency of the United States, so he assumed the responsibility.

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

You can find more articles about the IPCC in our archives:

Why you should read the new IPCC report

The IPCC Report: The New World War Two

The Week in Carbon

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(Posted by Ben Block in Worldchanging Interviews at 10:17 AM)

New Thinkers Series: Joshua Wolfe and the GHG Team

WorldChanging Team — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:12:31 +0000

On Tuesday, we had lunch with Joshua Wolfe, president and founding member of GHG Photos, a new collaborative organization of leading climate change photographers.

He told us a lot about his job as a climate change photographer, which from what we could tell, is one of the more fascinating jobs around. Whether he's climbing mountains with 90 lbs of sensitive equipment and a stash of protein bars; gazing down dizzily through the lens from the window of a prop jet; or performing yet another death-defying feat to get that perfect glacial shot, Wolfe's work has put him face-to-face with more of the changing landscape than most people will ever see. His heartbreakingly beautiful photographs are proof.

But Wolfe and the other GHG photographers have a larger mission. Through their photographs, they hope to help accelerate the conversation about climate change. The photographers routinely look to climate scientists, like those from Columbia University's Earth Institute, and veteran environmental journalists, like Andrew Revkin and Elizabeth Kolbert, to help tell the story of climate change more clearly through science. With images, science and words, they aim to give thousands of new people a better grasp of what is really happening, and why.

One of the biggest obstacles to the debate about climate change, Wolfe says, is the inequity in basic background knowledge of the issue. "If you're a reporter covering climate change, you always have to start at Point A," he says, and it's tough to introduce really intricate concepts when you're always explaining the basic idea. As a result, he worries that stories about climate change seem to many like a series of catastrophic and overwhelming events – like major hurricanes and other natural disasters – but it's harder to explain how they're all related, and to reveal the more insidious creep of planetary symptoms.

By seeking out images of a warming world, and of the science behind understanding and combating climate change, Wolfe and GHG hope to raise the bar of universal understanding, and to make knowledge not only more accessible, but more vivid.

Worldchanging's New Thinkers Series is our way of calling attention to the emerging leaders in a changing world. If you know of an individual or group that we should profile, send an email to Sarahk [at] worldchanging [dot] com.

Image credit: GHG Photos

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Worldchanging Interviews at 3:12 PM)

Solutions Twin Cities

Sarah Kuck — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:00:15 +0000

When creative people gather, the effect can be contagious. Case in point: the idea showcasing organization Solutions Twin Cities.

Last week, I met with the group's founders at Bev's Wine Bar in Minnepolis' rapidly developing Warehouse District. In the dimly lit bar, lodged between a strip joint, the new Twins Stadium and the light rail line, Troy Gallas and Colin Kloecker told me about their ideas for their organization and city.

As Gallas and Kloecker, both designers at local socially conscious architecture firms, tell it, their vision for STC was born when they attended the Worldchanging Book Tour in 2006 at Kingman Studios in Minneapolis. When people in the room began to introduce themselves and describe their work, they were both blown away by how many change makers were active in their own city.

After that night, the two friends decided they wanted to find a way to unite these people on a more regular basis by hosting events that would foster creativity and bring together people finding positive solutions. These goals led to the creation of Solutions Twin Cities. Now the duo spends most of their non-working hours dreaming up creative ways to connect inspired people to the ideas and tools they need to make the Twin Cities a better place.

Since November 2006, they've coordinated several events at which locals present their projects or ideas for solving local, region and global problems. Using a flash format (similar to that of Tokyo-based Pecha Kucha Night), each presenter has about seven minutes to show 20 slides. The bite-sized, highly visual presentations encourage presenters to get creative about discussing their work, and give attendees lots of great information in a short amount of time. Previous Solutions events have featured performance artists and green roofing experts, photographers and professors.

The first event turned out to be hugely popular, and the co-founders watched with surprise and delight as they witnessed event after event fill to standing-room only.

This popularity has resulted in universities, art galleries and other diverse institutions seeking them out to present in their spaces, and has inspired the two to use the momentum to move the organization forward. In the very near future, Solutions Twin Cities will be curating the back page of Minneapolis' Metro Magazine, where they will publish mapping projects that help residents visualize the city in different ways. For example, for their first map, they asked 20 people to wander the city for 90 minutes at a time and plot specific point along the way. Participants were asked to record different smells, sights and emotions experienced on their strolls, and to rate each with a level of intensity (instead of positive or negative). Look for this map and more like it starting in Metro's January issue.

Gallas and Kloecker's future plans involve establishing Solutions Twin Cities as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, and possibly building it a brick-and-mortar home: a "porous storefront" in the Twin Cities where "people come in and ideas come out."

Solutions Twin Cities is worldchanging because of its ability to bring creative people together and to encourage the community to think differently about the social, physical and cultural constructs of the city. We expect great work from this dynamic pair in the years to come. And personally, as a Midwesterner, I'm glad to see there is not only a local hunger for this type of organization and information but also young sustainability-minded entrepreneurs willing to step up and deliver.

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(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Worldchanging Interviews at 1:00 PM)