Greenwire reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has named Todd Stern to the new position of “climate envoy.” His bio details include the following:
Under President Clinton, Stern coordinated the administration’s Initiative on Global Climate Change from 1997 to 1999. He acted as the senior White House negotiator at the [1997] climate negotiations in Kyoto, Japan, and [December 1998] Buenos Aires, Argentina. . . .
That’s right. He was up to his eyeballs in ignoring the unanimous Senate instruction to not agree to Kyoto, all the way through when President Clinton signed the thing in November 1998 (sorry, Bush haters, Clinton beat him to it). And now he’s going to figure out how to rope us in to a spiffier, purportedly stiffer version of that which not one senator — not even Sen. Clinton — sought to move.
I have a piece in February’s Federalist Society Engage magazine detailing the weaknesses in the Kyoto Industry’s clever idea of not calling this next one a “treaty,” in order to to get around that nagging requirement of Senate ratification. With this fellow at the helm, it sure would be consistent.