As if to confirm the widespread view among skeptics of man-made climate-change theories that global-warming alarmism is akin to a religious cult, United Nations “climate science” boss Rajendra K. Pachauri admitted in his resignation letter this week that his crusade to purportedly save the planet from CO2 is more than just a mission — it is his “religion.” The chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was forced to step down this week after 13 years on the job amid accusations and court proceedings surrounding alleged sexual harassment, stalking, and criminal intimidation of a female researcher.
Perhaps more important than why he is stepping down is the explosive revelation contained in his resignation letter hinting at the true nature of his radical cause. “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission,” Pachauri wrote. “It is my religion and my dharma.” According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, the term dharma in Hinduism is a “fundamental concept” that refers to “the order and custom which make life and a universe possible, and thus to the behaviors appropriate to the maintenance of that order.” It was traditionally associated with sacrifices to the Hindu gods.
Of course, critics and skeptics of the UN IPCC — who have pointed out the UN’s failed alarmist predictions and its increasingly outlandish pronouncements — have long contended that anthropogenic (man-made) global warming (AGW) theorists are a cult. One of the primary reasons for the association is that despite observable evidence discrediting virtually every falsifiable forecast offered by the UN-backed alarmist camp (warming and cooling), AGW believers continue to cling to their theory. For example, there has been no global warming in almost two decades, as Pachauri admitted, despite UN IPCC predictions of accelerated temperature increases. Too, there have been record-high levels of sea ice in recent years, again defying alarmist forecasts.
Like a cult, the alarmists defend the theory with increasing extremism, even calling for skeptics to be re-educated, imprisoned, and executed. Pachuri himself publicly wished in 2010 that skeptics of his theory would “apply asbestos to their faces every day.” Citing those trends, just last month, MIT Meteorology Professor Emeritus Richard Lindzen publicly compared the alarmist movement to a religious cult. “As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying, ‘oh, we were wrong,’ they get more and more fanatical,” he said. “I think that’s what’s happening here. Think about it…. You’ve led an unpleasant life, you haven’t led a very virtuous life, but now you’re told, you get absolution if you watch your carbon footprint. It’s salvation!”
During the United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012, Christ the Redeemer — Rio de Janeiro’s most famous landmark, a massive statue of Jesus Christ on top of Corcovado mountain overlooking Rio — was illuminated using bright green lights. AGW skeptics at the radical UN confab told this reporter that the stunt was a fitting symbol for the controversial summit in more ways than one. Lord Christopher Monckton, a policy advisor to former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and one of the most well-known opponents of the UN’s supposed environmental agenda, called it “a kind of childish message that the environmental religion is now replacing Christianity.” Attending the conference made that clear as well.
According to Lord Monckton, those who have lost the “true faith” nevertheless felt the need for religion and a common bond between themselves — and thought they had found it “in the spurious nostrums of Marxist environmentalism.” Indeed, shortly before the UN “sustainability” summit began, green legend James Lovelock — the scientist and environmentalist who first came up with the whole Earth-as-goddess “Gaia” concept — warned that the “green religion” was now “taking over from the Christian religion.” Numerous experts, Christians, and scientists have made similar arguments in recent years.
Two years before the UN Rio+20 sustainability summit, meanwhile, a UN “climate” summit in Cancun began with UN climate-policy boss Christiana Figueres offering a prayer to the ancient Mayan jaguar goddess known as Ixchel. Describing the mythic entity as a goddess associated with the moon, reason, creativity, and weaving — while carefully omitting Ixchel’s association with war, human sacrifice, and cannibalism — Figueres called on Ixchel to “inspire” the climate delegates.
“May she inspire you, because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools,” Figueres said in the opening speech. “Excellencies, the goddess Ixchel would probably tell you that a tapestry is the result of the skillful interlacing of many threads…. I am convinced that 20 years from now, we will admire the policy tapestry that you have woven together and think back fondly to Cancun and the inspiration of Ixchel.” More recently, Figueres admitted the UN was seeking to transform the world’s economic system and claimed the godless Communist Chinese system was better suited to fight “global warming” than the U.S. Constitution and the government it created.
With Pachauri’s admission that his zeal to supposedly save the planet from humans and their essentially insignificant CO2 emissions — a fraction of one percent of the greenhouse gases naturally in the atmosphere — is actually a religious calling, critics say it is time for a major overhaul of the “missionary” UN IPCC. Among the voices calling for reform was the Global Warming Policy Forum, which has long warned that the IPCC leadership was losing scientific objectivity and adopting environmentalism as a missionary cause.
During Pachauri’s tenure, the GWPF said, the world has witnessed a “near-complete shutting down of open scientific debate, militant hostility to any questioning of the claims or assertions of the IPCC, and the zealous promulgation of costly and irrational energy policies with inadequate regard for the balancing of human costs and benefits.” “It is clear that a missionary environmentalist mindset has been embedded at the highest levels of the IPCC, and we reiterate our concerns that it has been spreading throughout the organization, with the full support of the leadership,” the forum continued in its statement about Pachauri’s admission.
“We call upon policymakers to begin asking some overdue questions about this organization upon which they rely so heavily,” the GWPF concluded. “In particular, we are left to wonder how Dr. Pachauri’s extreme biases have affected the work of the IPCC in recent years and the advice it gives to governments.”
Climate Depot editor Marc Morano, meanwhile, suggested that Pachauri’s departure would offer a big boost to the IPCC, but that it should have come years ago. “If Pachauri had any decency, he would have resigned in the wake of the Climategate scandal which broke in 2009,” Morano said in a statement, referring to the infamous e-mails showing “climate scientists” conspiring to unlawfully mislead the world about their theory. “Climategate implicated the upper echelon of UN IPCC scientists in attempting to collude and craft a narrative on global warming while allowing no dissent. Or Pachauri could have resigned when he … conceded that the IPCC was at the ‘beck and call’ of governments.”
“There were so many opportunities to do the right thing and fade away,” added Morano, a former staffer for current Senate Environment Committee Chairman and prominent AGW skeptic Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.). “But it took the proceedings of the Indian court system over the allegations of sexual harassment to finally bring Pachauri down. Things can only be looking up for the UN IPCC now that it has ridded itself of this political and ethical cancer.”
Fiddling with the data and pumping out unwarranted alarmism have become par for the course at the UN. Apparently, though, sexual harassment is common at the UN as well. A 2009 Wall Street Journal report noted that the outfit has been struggling to deal with “an embarrassing string of sexual-harassment complaints within its own ranks.” In addition to widespread sexual harassment, UN “peace” troops have been exposed systematically raping and sexually exploiting civilians and children from the Ivory Coast and Somalia to Haiti and Cambodia. In just one Ivorian town, a survey of minor girls revealed that eight out of 10 admitted to regularly being raped and forced into sexual acts by UN soldiers.
Of course, Pachauri is not the only top-level AGW theorist to be accused of sexual harassment, either. Former U.S. vice president and self-styled climate expert Al Gore, for example, in addition to being embarrassingly wrong on his outlandish predictions, has been accused of sexual assault by multiple alleged victims. Some commentators even suggested that Gore, who has profited handsomely from the alarmism he promotes, would be a good candidate to take Pachauri’s job.
A better proposal, though, would be for the U.S. government to withdraw from the UN and defund its religious climate charade. After all, the First Amendment prohibits Congress from making any laws respecting an establishment of religion. If Pachauri’s resignation letter is to be believed, funding the IPCC and the UN’s climate hysteria with U.S. tax dollars is promoting a (pseudo-)religion and therefore, unconstitutional by definition.
Photo of Rajendra K. Pachauri: Marshall.niles
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at:
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