Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be a central player in developing a global warming mitigation plan. She will be working on the plan with Stephen Chu, Secretary of the Department of Energy, Lisa P. Jackson, Adminstrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Nancy Sutley, Chairwoman of the President's Council on Environmental Quality, Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Carol Browner, Energy Czar.
Secretary Clinton has stated that:
Secretary Clinton has stated that:
"Climate change is an unambiguous security threat. At the extreme it threatens our very existence. But well before that point, it could well incite new wars of an old kind over basic resources – like food, water and arable land. The upcoming 2009 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Copenhagen will be the stage for the next opportunity for the United States to ratify a climate change treaty like the Kyoto Protocol."
Secretary Clinton also has nuclear nonproliferation on her agenda. We hope the Obama administration will embrace the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) for cooperating countries in order to promote the safe and secure use of nuclear power for electricity production and climate change mitigation. We hope she will support the U.S.-India Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Initiative (1) (2), and other '123' Agreements.
The Center also supports our civilian nuclear power agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). One of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's last acts was to sign such an agreement with UAE. "123" refers to a section of the Atomic Energy Act. The agreement now has to be sent by Obama to Congress for approval. The agreement protects against development of nuclear weapons. This type of agreement is crucial to avoiding additional greenhouse gases from fossil power plants. Such agreements can also provide the bridge technology until clean coal technology is commercialized.
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