By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/ipcc1pachauri122109.html
UNITED NATIONS, December 21 -- While most observers and even participants describe the Copenhagen global warming talks as a disappointment, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday told the Press that they "sealed the deal" and were a success.
Inner City Press asked Mr. Ban about the scandal erupting around the undisclosed business interests of the chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Rajendra Pachauri, from the Tata Group through Deutsche Bank to Credit Suisse, and about the criticism by the chairman of the Group of 77 and its now 130 member states.
Mr. Ban entirely dodged the first question, paradoxically using it as an opportunity to praise business. On the second, he asserted that the chairman of the Group of 77 was not, in fact, speaking for the Group, since others' of its members spoke more positively.
Moments later, Inner City Press asked Sudan's Ambassador to the UN about Mr. Ban's comments. "Divide and rule," he answered, calling the Copenhagen process "climate apartheid." This phrase steps back from his counterpart in Copenhagen who analogized it to the Holocaust.
Pachauri's conflicts of interest are extensive and emblematic of the UN's lack of transparency and safeguards.
As detailed in the Telegraph
In 2008 he was made an adviser on renewable and sustainable energy to the Credit Suisse bank and the Rockefeller Foundation. He joined the board of the Nordic Glitnir Bank... This year Dr Pachauri joined the New York investment fund Pegasus as a ‘strategic adviser’... He is on the climate change advisory board of Deutsche Bank... One subject the talkative Dr Pachauri remains silent on, however, is how much money he is paid for all these important posts, which must run into millions of dollars.
So, notwithstanding the non-responsive answer Monday morning, does Mr. Ban believe that Pachauri should make public financial disclosure of these interests? Watch this site.
