Secretary Clinton names climate czar
By Mike Allen, Yahoo News, Jan 26, 10:30 am ET
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday will name Todd D. Stern, a trusted top aide in her husband’s White House, to serve as a special envoy for climate change, Democratic officials said.
Climate was largely ignored by President George W. Bush’s State Department, but the officials said Stern’s appointment shows it will be a priority throughout President Barack Obama’s administration.
Stern was staff secretary, a sensitive job that makes him the gatekeeper to every piece of paper the President sees and signs. Also for Clinton, he was senior White House negotiator at the Kyoto and Buenos Aires climate negotiations.
So Stern is an authority on the issue, knows the inner workings of the White House and has a close relationship with the secretary of State.
“This is another indication that President Obama is taking the issue of climate crisis seriously across the administration,” one official said. “This is a global problem. You can’t just fix it here. You have to fix it everywhere.”
Stern has been a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, focusing on climate change andenvironmental issues. He is also a partner at the giant law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, where he is vice chair of the firm's Public Policy and Strategy practice.
From his CAP bio: “As assistant to the president and staff secretary in the White House from 1993 to 1998, Stern played a central role in preparing the key issues of domestic, economic and national security policy for the president's decisions. He also coordinated the administration's Initiative on Global Climate Change from 1997 to 1999, acting as the senior White House negotiator at the Kyoto and Buenos Aires negotiations. At Treasury, from 1999 to 2001, Stern advised the secretary on the policy and politics of a broad range of economic and financial issues. After leaving the Government, Stern served as an adjunct lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and as a resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Stern graduated with Highest Honors from Dartmouth College in 1973, and with Honors from Harvard Law School in 1977. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.”
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President Obama and Secretary Clinton are continuing to show that they are going to make addressing global warming a top priority as they are putting their team in place in record time. Oh how refreshing a change from the last eight years of no leadership and no progress. So now we have real leadership on this issue, let's hope that we can make real progress by Copenhagen. I discuss some of the hints of that change that Clinton and Todd Stern outlined here: http://tinyurl.com/US-envoy.
This team will have to get up to speed fast, start to reach out to other countries, and begin to flesh out the US positions as the pace of the negotiations are set to pick up speed following the meeting in Poznan, Poland this past December. In just over 60 days, this team will be sitting with other countries at the negotiating table as the next international negotiations will be held the end of March in Bonn, Germany.
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