As Executive Vice President for Policy of Clean Air – Cool Planet, Mr. Yeager leads efforts to design and promote scientifically sound, economically smart approaches to the problem of climate change, at both the national and international levels. CA-CP’s policy priorities include designing sound architecture for a U.S. cap and trade emissions reduction program, promoting long-term, high risk energy research, encouraging a coherent national approach to adaptation, achieving reductions in short-lived pollutants that exacerbate warming in the Arctic, and developing approaches for the conservation and management of Arctic ecosystems affected by climate change.
Mr. Yeager has extensive experience in both national and international environmental policy making. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment and Development at the State Department from 1998 to 2000 and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs at the Department of the Interior from 1993 to 1998. He has also served as a senior consultant to leading environmental organizations, foundations, and international institutions.
Mr. Yeager has a long involvement with issues in the U.S. Arctic, and is a frequent visitor to the region. He was the lead U.S. negotiator for the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). He participated in the initial development of the Arctic Council, and led a number of administration initiatives in Alaska, including efforts to conserve the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to develop an environmentally sound oil and gas leasing program in the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska (NPR-A). He is the co-author of A New Sea: the Need for a Regional Agreement on Management and Conservation of the Arctic Marine Environment, published by WWF-International in October 2006.
During his eight years in government, Mr. Yeager also led a wide range of other environmental policy efforts, including the negotiation of the Montreal Protocol on Biosafety, the development of a restoration strategy for the Everglades, the establishment, with the Mexican government, of a joint natural resource mapping program for the U.S.-Mexico border zone, the creation of the Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN), and the Clinton initiative to reduce illegal poaching of tiger and rhino products.
In addition to his government service, Mr. Yeager has a twenty year history of leadership in the U.S. and international environmental community, having served for four years as the Vice President for the Global Threats Program at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF-US), and earlier, as Vice President for Governmental Affairs at the National Audubon Society, and as Washington Representative for the Sierra Club. Mr. Yeager received his B.A. from Stanford University. He is married to Cynthia Diane Shogan and has two children: Hannah, age 28, and Liesel, age 25.