Nobel laureate urges prompt action on climate change

In delivering his formal address on Dec. 10 while accepting a share of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC Chairman and former East-West Center Visiting Senior Fellow Dr. Rajendra Pachauri told the audience at Oslo City Hall that the hazards of climate change are already a reality in some places and present the acute possibility of disaster, especially for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities, but that prompt action by more affluent societies could moderate such impacts.

“Neglect in protecting our heritage of natural resources could prove extremely harmful for the human race and for all species that share common space on Planet Earth,” Pachauri said. But, he said, “it is within the reach of human society to meet these threats. The impacts of climate change can be limited by suitable adaptation measures and stringent mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Click here to watch a video or read the full text of Pachauri’s Nobel Lecture.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded equal shares of this year’s Peace Prize to the IPCC ¬¬– a review body of hundreds of scientists around the world set up by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme to provide an objective source of information on climate change – and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

The Nobel Prize presentation came just weeks after the IPCC released a major assessment report on climate change.

Pachauri, originally from Nainital, India, holds doctorates in both engineering and economics. He was a visiting senior fellow with the East-West Center Resource Systems Institute during the 1980s.