The Messenger

It's not easy getting international scientists to agree about anything. Meteorologists look at the world differently than geologists, and developing countries have different agendas than industrial nations. But Robert Watson, an American born in England, practically invented the process of getting the world's scientists to work together. In the 1980s, he persuaded researchers to combine their efforts to study damage to the ozone layer. And as chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he brought the same skills to bear on global warming. In 2001, the panel issued a landmark study endorsed by 120 nations. Its simple but devastating conclusion: Human beings have already caused the planet to heat up significantly, and it is likely to get worse. The study found that the Earth's temperature will likely rise as much as ten degrees by 2100, and that sea levels will rise as much as thirty-five inches.

The Bush administration responded by killing the messenger. After the study appeared, ExxonMobil sent a memo to the White House lobbying for Watson to be removed from the United Nations panel. A few months later, Watson was unceremoniously replaced with a less outspoken representative. "The Bush administration axed him because they saw him as too effective," says Michael Oppenheimer, a geosciences professor at Princeton University. "The world is poorer for not having Bob in this kind of role."

Not that the ouster silenced him. As chief scientist for the World Bank, Watson is on the road almost half of every year, working with developing nations to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions and to raise awareness about climate-related threats posed by widespread disease and flooding. "There could be a lot of lives lost and people being displaced," says Watson, 56. And despite being a target of the Bush administration, he notes that Democrats in Congress have also refused to impose mandatory targets to curb greenhouse gases. "What if tomorrow morning President Bush decided he wanted to move to targets -- would Congress approve it?" he asks. "The answer is most certainly no."

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