The United Nations' top climate diplomat will step down July 1 following a raucous four-year term during which world leaders struggled to reach agreement on a new international global warming deal. Yvo de Boer said today that he plans to leave his post as executive secretary of the Bonn, Germany-based U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change for a job providing consulting services to businesses and universities. De Boer, 55, was at the center of December's chaotic summit in Copenhagen, which ended in frustration for many world leaders who had hoped to craft a legally binding deal that would put the world on a path to reduce greenhouse gases in line with scientific warnings. Instead, they got a non-binding plan brokered in part by President Obama that saw two dozen of the world's largest global warming polluters pledging to cut emissions and help poor countries cope with climate change. In an interview with the Associated Press, de Boer said he wasn't leaving the U.N. job because of the outcome in Denmark. But he also acknowledged his disappointment that countries only "noted" the so-called "Copenhagen Accord" but didn't officially adopt it.

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