NOBEL PEACE PRIZE AWARDS PROVIDE INCREASED FOCUS ON CLIMATE PROTECTION
Commentary by John C.Topping. Jr.
President, Climate Institute
The decision by the Nobel Prize Committee to award the 2007 Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and to the US’s former Vice President Al Gore has provided even greater public focus on climate change. Rumors had circulated for a while that Gore might be recognized not only for the impact of his Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, but also for his tireless travels since the 2000 Presidential election to educate the public about climate change. During that time Gore has delivered lectures on climate change in about 50 nations.
The Nobel Committee recognized in its coupled awards that the international climate protection effort has been driven by efforts of numerous individuals—scientists, engineers, economists, other experts and a number of policymakers—functioning in this unprecedented international body known normally by its acronym, IPCC. Set up in 1988 in significant part at the urging of the US Reagan Administration and with US Chief Climate Negotiator Bill Nitze playing a catalytic role, the IPCC has sought to develop a broad consensus on the state of the art of climate science, of potential effects of climate change and of possible strategies both to adapt to climate change and to limit greenhouse gas emissions that might be driving this change.
Figure 1: Bill Nitze and Tibor Farago
The IPCC has been a remarkable enterprise unprecedented in world history. It has involved a blend of peer reviewed science by standards as rigorous as any in the most respected science journals together with active involvement of policymakers, especially in the response strategies portions. Since its inception the IPCC has produced four major assessments on roughly five- year intervals, each time with a report on the science, another on potential effects and a third on possible response strategies. Despite its hybrid quality and the potential for special interest lobbyists or countries with preeminent energy concerns to kick sand in the gears, the IPCC has managed in its four major iterations to zero in progressively on a better understanding of science and risks and of response options. These have included not only enhanced energy efficiency and movement to less carbon intensive fuels but also curbing of deforestation and other forms of sequestration in the soils, forests and deep oceans. If anything, the IPCC reports have tended to be a little conservative as in the Fourth Assessment Report’s projections of potential sea level rise; this tendency to understate risks is an expected result of a process that seeks a broad global consensus. This, however, has had the great virtue of developing a robust consensus that climate change is occurring and that human actions have been a significant driving force.
CLIMATE INSTITUTE ROLE AT THE LAUNCH
We at the Climate Institute take a special delight in the recognition that has been given to the IPCC. The first environmental organization on the planet to focus primarily on climate protection when it was established in 1986, the Climate Institute soon evolved into the NGO of the climate science and effects communities. Over the years many members of our Board of Directors and Board of Advisors have played key roles in the deliberations of the IPCC. Stephen Schneider, Michael MacCracken, and Graeme Pearman have played a central role throughout the IPCC’s existence in developing a better understanding of the atmospheric science at the heart of climate change and Stephen Leatherman has during this same time contributed greatly to the IPCC’s understanding of the implications of sea level rise. In the forefront of efforts to assess potential effects of climate change have been Martin Parry and Shuzo Nishioka of our Board of Directors and Richard Odingo, Cynthia Rosenzweig, Barrie Pittock, Aca Sughandy, Sharad Adhikary, Nobuo Mimura and Suresh Sinha of our Board of Advisors.
Figure 2: Martin Parry, Antonio Magalhaes, Howard Ferguson
Long-time Board member Pier Vellinga has played a key role in IPCC work both on coastal vulnerability and adaptation and on greenhouse gas mitigation options. Devra Davis has played an important role on health and air quality effects. At the initiative of Shuzo Nishioka, the Climate Institute enjoyed a unique status among environmental organizations during the IPCC First Assessment Report adopted in August 1990 in Sundsvall, Sweden and the Update adopted in Geneva, Switzerland nearly two years later. Working under the direction of the Japan Environment Agency, the Climate Institute staff edited the portions of the IPCC First Assessment and Update on Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Human Settlement, the Energy, Transport and Industrial Sectors, Human Health and Air Quality and Likely Impacts of Changes in UV-B. At the same time, Institute staff members served as Lead Authors of the portions of the First Assessment and the 1992 Update on Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Human Settlement and the Transport and Industrial Sectors.
Figure 3: From left to right; Shuzo Nishioka, W.J. McG. Tegart, John Topping, Michio Hashimoto, Suresh Sinha, Bill Sprigg, and a Russian Orthodox priest, Zagorsk, USSR 1990
The Institute’s reputation as an honest broker of facts made it possible for it to be invited by the IPCC and the United Nations Environment Program to organize briefings in 1991 and 1992 on climate change implications for heads of state, heads of government, cabinet ministers and parliamentarians.
The Institute’s Chairman, Sir Crispin Tickell, led the first of these briefings in March 1991 at Los Pinos, Mexico’s Presidential Palace. Arrangements were made by Institute Board member Luis Manuel Guerra, spearhead of Mexico’s air quality protection movement. Participating on the team was UNEP North American Regional Director and Institute Board member Noel Brown who was instrumental in obtaining IPCC-UNEP sponsorship of these briefings. The briefing appeared to bear immediate results; the next week President Salinas announced the creation of a national climate change committee and the closure of a major PEMEX refinery near Mexico City.
Figure 4: Luis Manuel Guerra, Sir Crispin Tickell, and Hind Sadek,
Mexico City Presidential Briefing March 1991
In the next year and a half the Climate Institute organized similar briefings in 21 other nations. Overseeing this Institute effort was Ata Qureshi, once a forester in Pakistan. Ata showed his remarkable shrewdness assembling teams including experts from developing countries in each region as well as from major industrial countries.
Figure 5: Ata Qureshi and Sir John Houghton
Our team in Brazil included Eneas Salati, head of the leading Amazonian research center; Antonio Magalhaes, the leading expert on drought in Northeast Brazil; Vernon Kousky, a NOAA expert on El Nino; and myself with slides of beaches in the State of Rio de Janeiro that might succumb to sea level rise. Our briefings in Honduras were led by one of the world’s top atmospheric scientists, Gordon MacDonald. Briefing teams in Asia included besides Ata Qureshi, experts from Australia’s CSIRO- Graeme Pearman and Barrie Pittock. Crucial help in arranging these briefings was provided by Aca Sughandy in Indonesia and Senator Heherson Alvarez in the Philippines, both of whom are members of the Institute Board of Advisors. Hind Sadek, who had organized the 1989 Cairo World Climate Conference, spearheaded the Climate Institute Ministerial Briefings in the Middle East in 1991. Briefing team members included two Francophone Belgians: Environment Minister Miet Smet and Andre Berger, a world leading expert on the Milankovitch effect. Scott Stefanski of the Climate Institute organized briefings in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Crucial expertise was provided by Mickey Glantz, Tibor Farago and Maciej Sadowski. As it carried out these briefings for the IPCC and UNEP the Climate Institute developed and distributed slide sets in 11 languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. Twenty of these 22 briefings were held prior to the June 1992 Rio World Summit, the largest gathering in human history to that date of world leaders. These Climate Change Briefings appear to have smoothed the way to the signing of the Framework Convention on Climate Change by nearly all of these leaders.
IPCC’S EVOLVING ROLE
As climate change has become a more contentious issue with the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol imposing binding greenhouse emission limits on industrial countries that agree to participate, the IPCC has managed to emerge with remarkable authority as a source of objective information. It has achieved this under three remarkable Chairmen: Bert Bolin, a highly respected Swedish atmospheric scientist; Bob Watson, a brilliant British born scientist who led NASA’s scientific work leading up to the Montreal Protocol and who played a key role on climate science in the Clinton White House and then served as Chief Scientist for the World Bank; and the current Chair, R.K. Pachauri, who leads India’s highly regarded The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI). Bert Bolin received the Climate Institute Award for Scientific Achievement in 1990; Bob Watson received the same in 1993 when then Vice President Al Gore received the Climate Institute’s Global Environmental Leadership Award for his work as a Congressman and Senator in rallying global parliamentarians to address climate change. Dr. Pachauri’s TERI directed the India Climate Change Country Study from 1992-1994 in an eight nation set of Country Studies coordinated by the Climate Institute and funded by the Asian Development Bank.
The resiliency of the IPCC was evident following some clumsy efforts by US energy lobbyists at the inception of the Bush Administration to force out of positions of influence three top US climate scientists: Rosina Bierbaum, who was leading the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy at the end of the Clinton Administration; Mike MacCracken, who had spearheaded the US National Assessment on Climate Vulnerability; and Bob Watson, who was Chair of the IPCC. Soon after Rosina Bierbaum became Dean of the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at University of Michigan. In that role she has excelled as an educator and has been active in rallying opinion leaders to address climate change. Soon after stepping out of public life, Mike MacCracken assumed the role of Chief Scientist for Climate Programs of the Climate Institute.
Figure 6: Mike MacCracken
He also served from 2003 to 2007 as President of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences. During this time he played a pivotal role in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment released in November 2004 and that created a huge upsurge in public and media interest in climate. Mike had the atmospheric science lead in a highly influential report, Confronting Climate Change: Managing the Unavoidable and Avoiding the Unmanageable, produced by Sigma Xi and the UN Foundation. About a page and a half of Mike MacCracken’s affidavit for Massachusetts was quoted by Justice Stevens in the Majority US Supreme Court Opinion directing US EPA to consider auto emission controls to limit greenhouse gases.
The newly installed Bush Administration announced that rather than supporting the reelection of Bob Watson, the US Chair of IPCC, the US would support Pachauri of India. This proved a Pyrrhic victory if its purpose was to get the IPPC to trim its sails. Watson remained for a numberof years Chief Scientist of the World Bank where he played a significant role in efforts to have the Bank factor climate change into its program planning. Meanwhile, Pachauri was not beholden to the Bush Administration. Quite popular in his own right and benefiting from a sentiment that it might be time for a widely respected developing country expert to lead the IPCC, he might have won the Chairmanship, even without the US’s support. Moreover, Pachauri was a remarkable consensus builder.
Under his leadership the IPCC has faced up to the fact that irrespective of decisive actions to limit greenhouse emissions, humanity has already bought into a significant warming and that foresighted adaptation planning is essential. The Fourth Assessment Impacts Report highlights the need for Anticipatory Adaptation, as does the Sigma Xi-UN Foundation report.
GORE’S EMERGENCE AS A GLOBAL LEADER
Sometimes the test of an individual’s character is the response to a bitter disappointment, particularly one with a tinge of unfairness to it. Having won a popular vote plurality of over a half million votes over George Bush and having had a recount of a razor-thin Florida election halted by an unprecedented intervention of the US Supreme Court on what some viewed as a party line vote, Gore might have been expected to nurse a grievance. Yet soon Gore found a new purpose in life-alerting the world to a growing climate crisis. In his years as a Congressman and Senator this protégé of Roger Revelle had been out front speaking of climate change when few in public life would acknowledge it as an important concern. As Vice President he took some positive steps including pressing for release of US satellite data to show land use change and climate trends, there working closely with Climate Institute Board member Gordon MacDonald; and making a quick trip to the Kyoto Conference to shore up faltering negotiations. Yet in the 2000 general election campaign Gore provided little focus on climate change. Perhaps his advisors counseled that such advocacy might enable the Rove attack apparatus to characterize him as a Johnny One Note Environmentalist and they undoubtedly cautioned that such advocacy might cost him the electoral votes of West Virginia, a major coal producing state. As it was, Gore was to lose West Virginia, although likely far more on social issues than on coal politics. Downplaying the environment arguably might have been a factor in his loss in Florida where Ralph Nader swept thousands of votes that might have been Gore’s had he followed his instincts. Amazingly George Bush came out during the general election campaign for emission controls on carbon dioxide as an air pollutant, a position not even Gore had advocated. This was a short-lived campaign promise. Once Vice President Cheney was in place as the lead on energy policy this promise was the first to be abandoned.
Following his own instincts, Gore threw himself into the climate protection cause with the zeal of the young Congressman from Carthage who had held hearings on climate when few took it seriously. His doggedness in giving lectures with Power Point on his Apple Computer soon led to the effort to convert the lectures to a film with broad public appeal. An Inconvenient Truth managed to achieve remarkable audience appeal and garner two Oscars.
As Gore has achieved a rock star status he has been quite willing to share the limelight with climate scientists and activists. This has been especially so in Mexico where the Climate Institute is building a High Altitude Climate Observatory to be named for Sir Crispin Tickell, a close friend of Gore’s and perhaps the only policymaker to have addressed the climate issue before Gore. Gore effusively greeted Luis Roberto Acosta, the Climate Institute’s Director of Latin American Regional Affairs, who has been the driving force behind the observatory when they met July 31 in Mexico City.
Figure 7: Luis Roberto Acosta and Al Gore, Mexico City 2007
He spoke fondly of Climate Institute Chief Scientist Michael MacCracken who has been at his side during some of the sessions in Nashville Gore has held to train business and civic leaders to deliver a climate protection message. On a second visit to Mexico City October 5, Gore reaffirmed his interest in the growing climate protection movement in Mexico. Just as the Nobel announcement was being made, Gore was in Palo Alto. He made sure there were beside him climate scientists who had played a real role in the IPCC’s success: Stephen Schneider, Tom Heller, Terry Root, and Chris Field. It is likely Gore was especially delighted to share billing with the IPCC, so many of whose experts he knows on a first name basis. Gore's award has been quite popular in Europe where many see it as a rebuke to the go-slow policies of the Bush Administration. In coupling the Awards, however, the Norwegian Nobel Committee seemed to be reaching past short-term politics to underscore the priority of acting on a solid scientific basis..
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John Topping has been President and CEO of the Climate Institute since its founding in 1986. He is the editor of two volumes on climate change: Preparing for Climate Change (1988) and Coping with Climate Change (1989). From 1989-1990 he served as editor of the portions of the IPCC First Assessment Report concerning impacts of climate change on human settlement, industry, transport, energy, human health and air quality, and on impacts of climate and UV interactions and as Lead Author of the portions concerning impacts on human settlement, industry and transport. He served as co-editor and co-author of the same sections in the 1992 Update with Institute Research Associate David Hobbie.
