U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday named Todd Stern, a former White House assistant who was the chief U.S. negotiator at the Kyoto Protocol talks in President Bill Clinton's administration, as the special envoy for climate change.
Stern's appointment sends "an unequivocal message that the United States will be energetic, focused, strategic and serious about addressing global climate change and the corollary issue of clean energy," Clinton said.
"American leadership is essential to meeting the challenges of the 21st century, and chief among those is the complex, urgent and global threat of climate change," she said at a State Department ceremony held shortly after U.S. President Barack Obama announced new policies to allow states greater latitude in limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
Obama said on Monday that his government will take stronger actions to promote development of fuel efficient cars and to reduce U.S. dependence on energy sources. He also ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to review its decision to reject California's request to regulate car exhaust emissions blamed for contributing to global warming.
"The urgency of the global climate crisis must not be underestimated," Clinton said. "Nor should the science behind it or the facts on the ground be ignored or dismissed. The time for realism and action is now."
Todd Stern, a senior White House official under former president Bill Clinton, will be the administration's principal adviser on international climate policy and strategy, and chief U. S. negotiator at United Nations talks on climate change including an upcoming session in Copenhagen as well as with individual nations and groups.
Stern, a lawyer and environmental expert at the Center for American Progress, was an adviser from 1993 to 1998 to President Bill Clinton, working on the Kyoto and Buenos Aries climate change negotiations. He later worked at Treasury, where he was a senior adviser to the secretary. After his Clinton administration stint, Stern taught at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.