Green Rats Flee Sinking Ship of Global Warming

February 19, 2010 (LPAC) — Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the U.N.'s top "climate" official, announced today that he will leave that post in July, to work in the private sector. Despite the flop of the December 2009 Copenhagen conference on climate change held under de Boer's aegis, and the reported "uncertainty" over whether the failed climate treaty can be passed in a Mexico conference in December 2010, de Boer says "... the time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge." (This is roughly the equivalent, in the bureaucratic world, of the tearful politician who professes a new desire to spend time with his family.)

The last few months have been tough for de Boer, as his non-accomplishments for the past four years at the U.N., have proven to be built on sand. The failure of his Copenhagen conference occurred just after hacked e-mails from the East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) showed its researchers plotting to manipulate "global warming" data to stampede governments' policy-making. More recently, supposed scientific data in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an entity created to advise de Boer's office, has been exposed as specious. And just the other day, leading CRU figure Phil Jones admitted in a BBC interview, that from 1995 to the present, there has been no statistically-significant global warming.

De Boer asserted in his resignation statement, that governments must work with private businesses to move forward in cutting emissions around the globe; this is presumably what he'll be pursuing in his new job, as a consultant on environmental sustainability to businesses and universities, for KPMG.

But perhaps Secretary de Boer has jumped the wrong way, into the world of "business-[FILL IN BLANK] partnerships" so popular, 'til now, in policy-making. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reported that three companies — oil majors BP PLC and Conoco Philips, and heavy-equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc. — had quit the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (US CAP — get it?), an influential environmental-business lobbying group focussed on shaping U.S. climate-change legislation. The US CAP, the Journal reports, "had been instrumental in building support in Washington for capping emissions of greenhouse gases." Spokesmen for BP and Conoco said the companies still support climate-change legislation — that's good PR, of course — but want to work outside US CAP's umbrella. Conoco's spokesman said that while US CAP is devoted to passage of legislation per se, Conoco is concerned with the details of what might be in the bill. Caterpillar, for its part, says it will devote its efforts to commercializing green technologies. The Journal reports that support for curbing greenhouse gas emissions waned as the economy worsened, and notes that the Obama Administration says, that if Congress does not pass legislation, it will accomplish the goals administratively, through Environmental Protection Agency rulemaking.