Global Policy Forum

by Paul Brown, environment correspondent

The Bush administration, at the urging of the world's biggest oil company, ExxonMobil, is trying to oust Robert Watson, the British scientist and chairman since 1996 of the panel that has advised the world about the dangers of global warming.

In what had been a nonpolitical process, the US has proposed alternative candidates for the post that Mr Watson holds, in effect attempting to remove a strong advocate of urgent action to save the planet.

An election for the post will now have to be held when the 19th plenary session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is held in Geneva in two weeks - the first contest since the body was formed in 1989. The nomination follows an ExxonMobil memo to the White House, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that demands their candidates replace scientists with "aggressive agendas".

The Bush decision to take the oil giant's advice is the latest in a long and successful push by ExxonMobil to undermine climate science and stop Washington taking any action that might damage sales.

Mr Watson, who was once President Clinton's environmental adviser and is the current chief scientist at the World Bank, has been an energetic chairman of the 3,000-strong IPCC, a body which examines evidence of climate change and predicts future temperature and sea-level rises.

ExxonMobil spent more than £700m in the 1990s financing the Climate Change Convention (CCC), a group of oil, motor and heavy industries opposed to action against global warming to defend their interests. Like-minded oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and other Opec members have also tried to shape proceedings. Companies such as Shell and BP left the CCC as the evidence grew of global warming, but ExxonMobil's lobbyists attended every meeting of the panel and of the CCC to advise politicians to the contrary.

When Mr Bush repudiated the Kyoto protocol last year, ExxonMobil was widely blamed and a boycott of its products was launched. Mr Bush's election, partly funded by ExxonMobil, gave the senior environmental adviser at the company's Washington office, Randy Randol, the chance to write to John Howard, the assistant director of the White House Council on Environmental Policy. Mr Howard had also been the environmental adviser to Bush when governor of Texas.

The memo accuses Mr Watson of a "personal agenda" on climate change and suggests a fresh American team is placed on the panel of experts. Mr Randol says he will visit the White House to discuss a team "that can better represent the Bush administration interests". Among new appointments suggested are Dr Richard Lindzen, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an internationally known sceptic of global warming, and John Christy, from the University of Alabama-Huntsville, who told the US Senate that the world is being invigorated by extra carbon dioxide pumped out by man.

US scientists with respect for Mr Watson have been lobbying the White House not to endorse another candidate. But yesterday the US state department said it would support Dr Rajendra Pachauri, director-general of the Tata Energy Research Institute in New Delhi to take over Mr Watson's job as chairman of the entire panel.

In a statement to the New York Times, the White House administration said the decision was nothing to do with lobbying from ExxonMobil.

Last night, Dr Watson said he did not know how much notice the Bush administration had taken of the oil industry which he recognised was lobbying against him. "I have never been political; I have always been the advocate of good science," he said. "Whether governments have policies on global warming is up to them, our job is to point out the facts. Since the US position became known I have had many messages of support from countries both developed and developing. Since it is one country-one vote, I am confident of continuing."

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.