ABSTRACT

On an international front, the IPCC has accomplished much and is indirectly responsible for the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Accord and the Bali Roadmap. Here lies the prowess of this organization and the Assessment Reports. Unfortunately, the IPCC has failed dismally on the more important national level. An argument can be made that the IPCC never influenced any government; those that had already determined to act on climate change, such as Germany, embraced the IPCC recommendations, and those that rejected any policy initiatives, such as the US, simply ignored them. 1 A commentary in Nature stated: 2

The crucial point here is that no amount of reform of the IPCC, or rooting out of bad science — or of scientists behaving badly — will begin to correct the flaws in the dominant approach to climate policy. Rehabilitation of climate policy is a matter not of getting the science right, but of getting the politics right.