EDITORIAL: Rajendra Pachauri resigns U.N. global warming post over sexual harassment scandal

OPINION:

The chief of the United Nations climate change panel is passionate about his global warming beliefs, and some of his passion has gotten out of hand. Passion can do that. Rajendra Pachauri, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, has been forced to resign his post at the U.N. after he was accused of sexual harassment. Every man is entitled to his beliefs, but sometimes he has to keep his beliefs — and his affections — to himself. Mr. Pachauri was appointed to be a chief, not an evangelist.

Mr. Pachauri, 74, an academic from India, resigned the job he had held for a decade after a 29-year-old woman at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi accused him of harassing her with unwanted emails, telephone calls and text messages. A 74-year-old with romantic ambitions with a 29-year-old woman should keep in mind the caution to a dog with a hobby of chasing cars: Be careful, old Spot, you might catch one. Mr. Pachauri denied everything, but canceled a trip to Kenya to lead a U.N. panel on climate change nonetheless, and then resigned.

In a two-page letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Mr. Pachauri gave himself a fulsome pat on the back, saying the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “has always scaled new heights of excellence” during his years as chairman. Citing “current circumstances” for preventing his exercise in providing “strong leadership and dedication of time,” he said he had decided to step down. He also unbosomed his ardor for the pseudo-religion of environmentalism: “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.”

Affection for the place humanity calls home is commendable, and who would argue for the destruction of the planet and all its creatures great and small? His statement, however, confirms what many have suspected, that Mr. Pachauri took a faith-based approach to a fact-based assignment, making him unfit to lead an assessment of the impact of human activity, or the lack thereof, on the climate of the globe. The post demands a passion for science, not religion.

This was not the first time Mr. Pachauri’s enthusiasm for the warmist hypothesis put him on thin ice. In 2010, critics demanded his resignation after the U.N. panel’s fourth assessment claimed that glaciers in the Himalayas were melting so rapidly that they would disappear by 2035, a demonstrably false assertion that undermined the organization’s credibility. Though he arrived at the U.N. with a doctorate in engineering, Mr. Pachauri’s analytical skills were evidently overtaken by his self-proclaimed “dharma,” or religious mission, to save the earth.

For those who reject traditional faiths, reverence for Mother Earth is a cool, hip substitute. Unlike a religious faith that instructs believers to love and serve their fellow man, environmentalism teaches that followers can turn up their noses at neighbors in distress so long as they cherish enough rocks, trees and mountains. Though carbon-based fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas are part of the natural environment, too, they must be regarded as a blot on the natural world.

A scientific investigation into the planet’s climate must be guided by the clear-eyed who are able to master those impulses and maintain a dispassionate gift for separating fact from fiction. With climate activists pressing for $100 billion a year by 2020 to fight global warming, faked conclusions could be costly. Mr. Pachauri may ultimately get an opportunity to pursue his dharma (but not his employees) in a different venue, but the job of judging whether human-caused climate change is real should be given to someone who can put aside his religious ardor.