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http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03/todd-stern-climate-change-special-envoy
Climate-change negotiations are usually doomed by the sheer scope, complexity, and divisiveness of the issues involved-which makes the results of last December's talk in Paris, where nearly 200 countries agreed to be held accountable for decreasing global-warming levels, even more impressive. Todd Stern helped make it happen.
It was a great achievement when an agreement was reached at the Paris Climate Change Conference, last December, the most complicated and comprehensive climate negotiations ever undertaken. Nearly 200 nations signed on to hold global warming below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to submit their national plans for the world to see and review. The U.S. targeted to reduce emissions 26 percent to 28 percent below its 2005 levels over time. Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change from the first days of the Obama administration, deserves a huge chunk of the credit for this success.
The architecture of this new climate deal was first discussed at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, and Stern has pushed for it to be accepted as the basis for a global agreement ever since. He has navigated the tumultuous waters of the negotiations for an international response to climate change with purpose, endurance, and a strong sense of direction. Stern is not a green zealot. He understands that, he says, "to get 196 countries to agree, it goes without saying that everyone has to compromise and no one can secure everything they want," but he has applied his insightful and intelligent mind toward finding a road map for concerted action to halt global warming and the danger it poses to our way of life.
A native of Chicago, Stern, 64, honed his diplomatic skills as a student at Harvard Law School, as the senior White House aide representing Bill Clinton at the U.N. conferences on climate change in Kyoto and Buenos Aires, as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and as a partner in the law firm WilmerHale. These skills have been instrumental in breaking through the long deadlock in climate negotiations-as has his singular determination. He insists that when one possibility is exhausted another has to be developed, and by constantly scoping for new ideas and engaging with a wide range of countries from all parts of the world, he has succeeded in maneuvering the United States from the periphery back to center stage of the international climate negotiations.
Stern is very much a team player, both in terms of his colleagues (he cites both John Kerry's and President Obama's roles as being "extremely important") and his international counterparts, most significantly in China: "China was an historic antagonist," he notes, "but I worked very intensively with my counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, over the past seven years."
It has been a long journey, and the Paris agreement is far from perfect-as Stern told NPR after the talks: "There's a huge, long way to go now. This is the start. This sets the framework." But getting started makes all the difference, and the United States has been fortunate to have Todd Stern as special envoy, pinning down what's good for the climate and possible for America.
