Head of UN Climate Change Agency Quits After Sex Harassment Accusation

Miguel Villagran/Getty Images(NEW DELHI) — With the situation evidently too hot for him to handle, the chairman of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change abruptly resigned Thursday due to allegations of sexual harassment.

Rajendra Pachauri, who lives and works in India, left his post after an unidentified 29-year-old woman said that he had harassed her with a series of inappropriate text messages and emails.

Attorneys for Pachauri, 74, argue that their client was being set up by someone who sent bogus messages allegedly from Pachauri after his computer and phone were hacked.

However, Pachauri said that the U.N. agency on climate change, which won a Nobel Prize in 2007 for its warnings on the effect on greenhouse gas emissions, needs a full-time leader who can’t be distracted by legal matters that could drag on for years in India’s courts.

As it happened, Pachauri was planning to leave his job by September 2015.

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