"Top Climate Diplomat To Leave Obama Administration Next Month"

"Todd Stern, a leading architect of the Obama administration's international climate change strategy, will leave the State Department in the coming weeks, he told POLITICO.

Stern led the U.S. negotiating team that helped cinch a landmark global warming deal last year in Paris, an achievement that capped his nearly two-decade-long career in climate diplomacy. In the run-up to the negotiations, Stern worked to keep fast-developing nations at the negotiating table — at one point taking a lead Chinese diplomat to a baseball game — in order to secure an agreement that for the first time committed every nation on earth to limiting its carbon footprint.

Much of the work implementing the Paris agreement will fall to President Barack Obama's successor, who will likely be either former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has promised to build on Obama's climate policies, or business mogul Donald Trump, who has dismissed concern about the issue."
 
Andrew Restuccia reports for Politico March 21, 2016.