Copenhagen: is the hangover really over?

I’ve just come back from Copenhagen, where I spent a few days with a transatlantic group of journalists and climate change experts (scientists and business people).It was part of a study tour devoted to Energy, Climate and Oceans – Impacts on the Global Economy. One of the people we talked to was Lyyke Fries, the new Danish Climate and Energy Minister, who took over while her predecessor becomes EU Commissioner. “The Copenhagen hangover is over”, she told me, and said she was happy that the Copenhagen Accord was going to be a springboard for the next rounds of negotiations in Bonn and Mexico this year. She was presenting the targets entered on the UN list by the deadline (a flexible one, as UN climate chief Yvo de Boer stressed in January) as a successful step forward. At the same time she admits freely that the EU was sidelined in the creation of that accord and is trying to work out how to regain a prominent position in the climate process. She also refers to the “new world order” emerging, with countries like India, China and Brazil at the forefront.So it’s hard to believe the hangover is really over for Denmark or the EU, to mention but a few.
We also visited the Copenhagen office of Greenpeace. You won’t be surprised to hear that they have a different view of the Copenhagen Accord.
More about that and some of the interesting views put forward by North American experts and journos in the next couple of days.