US Attempts to Influence World Climate Body

'Key Foreign Policy Issue'

The US was concerned that an Iranian scientist would be elected as co-chair of one of the working groups, an eventuality which would have paired him with a US scientist. That, Rice wrote in a dispatch, would be "problematic and potentially at odds with overall US policy towards Iran."

12/07/2010 - If you don't play, we won't pay. That seems to be the US message to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change when it comes to key personnel decisions, according to one of the newly leaked dispatches. The State Department, the document seems to indicate, leaned on a financial lever to get its way.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a unique construct. It is made up of scientists who are tasked with monitoring the global climate. Exactly who those scientists are, however, is often a political question.

There are 3,000 of them in the IPCC, a group which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Every five years, the IPCC publishes an assessment report, a document which examines the health of the world's climate -- and one which goes a long way toward determining international climate policy. But just how much influence do politicians have on the group?

A cable sent from the US State Department on Sept. 2, 2008, and written by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, hints at the answer. The subject was the make-up of one of the three main working groups responsible for the report. Members were to be elected in a secret vote by the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva a short time later.

Serious Strike Against Him {read rest}