Alongside Al Gore, an Indian 'climate control' engineer

Alongside the Hollywood chic of Al Gore , Rajendra Pachauri's day planner can seem a bit pedestrian: Work every day, sometimes until 3 a.m., and – if at all possible – shoehorn in a cricket match with co-workers.

But his work ethic, along with the ability to build and inspire a team, helped win Dr. Pachauri his share of the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore on Friday, colleagues say. If Gore is the frontman of the crusade against global warming, then Pachauri runs the engine room as chairman of the UN Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Control (IPCC), which was named co-winner of the prize with Gore.

This year, the IPCC will churn out four reports on climate change, producing the scientific gravitas for Gore's glitz. Gore calls the IPCC "the world's preeminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis."

Like Gore, Pachauri is a global-warming pioneer. Since the late 1980s, the former industrial engineer has sought to use science to convince skeptics and CEOs of the need of reducing mankind's atmospheric imprint. Now, he warns that if the problem is not addressed, developing nations will bear the brunt of the crisis, suffering for a situation they did not create because they have not the resources to mitigate it.

The Nobel committee acknowledged this in its announcement, saying: "[Climate] changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars...."

Coordinating 600 scientists

It is from here, in a cluttered New Delhi office filled with teetering columns of paper and dozens of cricket trophies, that Pachauri has led his charge. Though he jokes that he has spent half of his five-year tenure as IPCC chairman in airplanes, Pachauri also spends long hours at his computer here, often arriving at 5 a.m. and sometimes staying past midnight, coordinating the work of some 600 scientists from more than 100 countries.

His greatest wish for this prize is that it might underscore the urgency of the situation. Based on his team's research, he estimates that the global community has eight years to reverse the trend of increasing greenhouse-gas emissions. After that, the effects will mount and become irreversible, he adds.

Beneath a mane of untidy black hair streaked with white, Pachauri says he first began studying the impact of carbon emissions on the atmosphere, "when I was working on energy issues after graduate school in the 1980s."

As early as 1988, he delivered an address to the International Association of Energy Economics on the threat that such emissions presented. Back then, he says, "that was seen as heresy by many members."

Page: 1 | 2