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Climate Change Guru May Be Special ‘Envoy of Disappointment,’ Critic Charges
CNSNews.com ^ | January 28, 2009 | Penny Starr

Posted on 01/28/2009 4:25:36 AM PST by Man50D

Signaling a departure from the Bush administration’s environmental policies, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has named Todd Stern as special envoy for climate change and vowed that America will “vigorously pursue negotiations, those sponsored by the United Nations, and those at sub-global, regional, and bilateral level that can lead to binding international climate agreements.”

In his acceptance speech on Monday, Stern, a veteran of the Clinton administration, also foreshadowed the United States signing on to international environmental treaties, including the Kyoto Protocol.

“The time for denial, delay, and dispute is over,” Stern said. “The time for the United States to take up its rightful place at the table is here.”

But William Yeatman, an energy policy analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market group, said Stern and the State Department cannot act unilaterally to approve global agreements.

“No international agreement is going to be binding. No treaty is going to be binding unless the Senate were to approve it,” Yeatman told CNSNews.com, adding that the Senate has a history of voting against legislation that agrees to environmental standards that could harm the U.S. economy.

“The Senate has expressed in 1998, the Byrd Hagel Resolution, by a vote of 95 to 0, that the United States would not agree to any economically harmful international climate agreement that did not also include China, India and other major developing countries,” said Yeatman.

Stern might turn out to be, Yeatman said, a Special “Envoy of Disappointment.”

Although the United States signed the 1992 Kyoto Protocol – a United Nations treaty regulating greenhouse gas emissions that went into effect in 2005 – it was never ratified by the Senate.

President George W. Bush rejected the Protocol in 2001, because it did not set the same emissions standards for developing and industrialized nations, such as China and India.

Stern, who was a senior Clinton White House representative at United Nations climate negotiations at both Kyoto and Buenos Aires, is likely to push for the United States to sign on to a global environmental pact.

He apparently would have the backing of President Barack Obama, who has already launched his domestic environmental agenda by issuing an order for U.S. automakers to make more fuel-efficient vehicles and asking the Environmental Protection Agency to review its waiver for regulating car emissions in California.

Stern has a long history of championing environmental causes, including as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, described by The Washington Post as a “left-of-center think tank and refuge for Clinton administration alumni.”

Its founder, former Clinton Chief of Staff John D. Podesta, said about his organization in the same May 22, 2006 Post article, “The right describes us as Hillary’s think tank.”

In an Oct. 15, 2007 article in Greenwire, Stern, who was then advising the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign on environmental issues, predicted the next administration would reverse the voluntary emission control stance of the Bush administration.

“All of the forces that have been supporting a purely voluntary approach suddenly think, ‘Oh God, there’s something bad coming down the track at us potentially, and God forbid we have President Hillary Clinton to deal with on this.’ ”

Yeatman said the Obama administration’s emphasis on climate change might be misplaced, given the other priorities facing the nation.

“A world beset with breast cancer, with mental health, with wretched poverty, I don’t really care about sweating warmer winters 100 years from now when we are all a lot richer,” Yeatman said, adding that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the earth will warm by two degrees by 2100.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bhoenergy; bhoenvironment; climatechange; globalwarming; hotdoglover; kyoto; soshillary; toddstern

1 posted on 01/28/2009 4:25:36 AM PST by Man50D
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To: OKSooner; honolulugal; Killing Time; Beowulf; Mr. Peabody; RW_Whacko; SideoutFred; Ole Okie; ...
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2 posted on 01/28/2009 4:27:43 AM PST by xcamel (The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it. - H. L. Mencken)
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To: Man50D; IrishCatholic; Normandy; According2RecentPollsAirIsGood; Fiddlstix; ...
 




Beam me to Planet Gore !

3 posted on 01/28/2009 4:28:16 AM PST by steelyourfaith (ObamaNation: Tax cheat sworn in as Treasury Seretary --- you can't make this stuff up !!!)
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To: Man50D
"...describes us as Hillary’s think tank."

Why would the smartest woman in the world need a think tank? Think about it.

4 posted on 01/28/2009 4:33:42 AM PST by Paladin2 (No, pundits strongly believe that the proper solution is more dilution.)
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To: Man50D

Our socialist overlords don’t let laws, rules, amendments, or little stuff like that to stop them from getting their way.


5 posted on 01/28/2009 4:38:34 AM PST by dforest (life is now good again....he has been inaugurated)
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To: Man50D
Our economy is gonna be so screwed by these airheads. And simply taking our our current extended sunspot minimum into account, one could fairly accurately predict that we are due to be hit with one of the worse winters any of us have experienced (2009/2010). So right at the time when people will need extra dough to burn extra carbon to stay above room temperature, these idiots will be making that process very difficult. I really don't mind if the progresso idiots want to commit mass suicide. Hey, whatever flips their boat. But why try to get the entire world to drink that koolaid ? If these are not crimes against humanity, what are ? Please, Just Give Humanity a Chance !
6 posted on 01/28/2009 4:46:52 AM PST by justa-hairyape
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To: Man50D
“The time for denial, delay, and dispute is over,”

He is right. It is getting harder and harder for the globull alarmist to deny the cooling.

7 posted on 01/28/2009 4:57:12 AM PST by Always Right (Obama: more arrogant than Bill Clinton, more naive than Jimmy Carter, and more liberal than LBJ.)
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To: indylindy
Our socialist overlords don’t let laws, rules, amendments, or little stuff like that to stop them from getting their way.

It's funny that in terms of means to an end, the Founding Fathers shared a similar belief with Chairman Mao: "Power comes from the barrel of a gun."

But when you think of it, whether someone is trying to achieve something right or wrong, he must escalate force to the point that he achieves it. If you live in a society where people are committed to truth and open to moral suasion, it's necessary only to show them their error. If you're a parent, you know that this doesn't work with children who have not yet developed their minds sufficiently to recognize truth or their will, to yield to it; other means are needed. If you're a citizen trying to live free from theft and robbery, you start by using locks on doors and alarm systems and taking care about where you go and when you go. In enlightened states, this takes the form of open or concealed carry. The next step up is making plans to dissuade or to neutralize the threat should the other defenses prove inadequate.

One nation can negotiate with another nation to the benefit of either in settling a problem. This presupposes that they are both operating within the same moral and legal framework. In order to protect itself against other nations that would be more rather than less willing to abandon that framework, a nation must make credible plans to dissuade or neutralize the threat should that framework be abandoned.

The relationships at their best yield to an outside arbiter, their common beliefs, and whatever force a mutually agreed upon contract specifies. If that doesn't work then other types of force must be used, implied threat, active threat of retaliation, and both defensive warfare and preventative strikes until that threat is turned aside or neutralized.
8 posted on 01/28/2009 4:58:21 AM PST by aruanan
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To: Man50D

“the State Department cannot act unilaterally to approve global agreements.”

In the Socialist mind of the State Dept., “Yes WE Can!”


9 posted on 01/28/2009 5:39:43 AM PST by wolfcreek (There is no 2 party system only arrogant Pols and their handlers)
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To: Man50D

Fools. All symbolism, no substance. Not a single nation who signed Kyoto has met its targets, and we would do the same.


10 posted on 01/28/2009 6:08:03 AM PST by Clock King (Radical Conservatives, arise!)
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