The disappointing outcome of the Copenhagen talks last month is likely to discourage some investors from committing to low-carbon investments, leading investors have conceded – despite likely progress on national and regional efforts to promote alternative energy technologies.

See the Environmental Finance story

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We know that recommendations coming from Copenhagen will likely take years to have practical effect. 

Meantime, companies are trying to understand how those recommendations -- and resulting legislation -- will impact their bottom lines. 

And smart companies are starting early by making climate change part of their business strategies. The article interviews David Hone, Shell's climate change advisor.

See the Climate Biz interview

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With the new year just getting under way, it is likely that a good deal of finger pointing — and finger wagging — is yet to come. For now, the following reactions from a cross section of politicians, industry representatives, authors, environment advocates and others suggest that, if nothing else, the fault lines that preceded the conference are still very much in place.

See the New York Times story with quotes from that cross section of people.

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The environmental movement's struggle is an incremental one. Activists around the world fight local battles within a common, global context. You win some and you lose some, but you're always working within certain limitations: the public's awareness of the issues, the receptiveness (or lack of it) of politicians, the limits of the possible as defined by national laws. Then, every few years, something comes along and changes the rules of the game. As the summit approached, more and more politicians seemed to be getting the message. Just before the summit, a group of lawmakers proposed a package of four green bills. Two are moving forward. The reason is that the world's governments now realize that they will be required to cut their countries' emissions in the future. Even if it didn't happen in Copenhagen, it probably will in Mexico City, or after. It may take time, but now it's clear to everyone that it will happen, eventually.

See the Treehugger story

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Two years of climate-change negotiations have now ended in a farce in Copenhagen. Rather than grappling with complex issues, President Barack Obama decided to declare victory with a vague statement of principles agreed to with four other countries. The rest were handed a fait accompli, which some accepted and others denounced. After the fact, the United Nations has argued that the document was generally accepted, although for most on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

See Jeffrey Sachs' opinion piece from the Globe and Mail (Canada)

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First they put the planet in square brackets, now they have deleted it from the text. This is no longer about saving the biosphere: now it's just a matter of saving face. As the talks melt down, everything that might have made a new treaty worthwhile is being scratched out. Any deal will do, as long as the negotiators can pretend they have achieved something. A clearer and less destructive treaty than the texts currently being discussed would be a sheaf of blank paper, which every negotiating party solemnly sits down to sign. This is the chaotic, disastrous denouement of a chaotic and disastrous summit. The event has been attended by historic levels of incompetence. Delegates arriving from the tropics spent 10 hours queueing in sub-zero temperatures without shelter, food or drink, let alone any explanation or announcement, before being turned away. Some people fainted from exposure; it's surprising that no one died. The process of negotiation is just as obtuse: there's no evidence here of the innovative methods of dispute resolution developed recently by mediators and coaches, just the same old pig-headed wrestling.

Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest. It was nice knowing you. Not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.

See George Monbiot's opinion piece in the Guardian (UK)

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The International Organisation for Migration warned on Friday the world must prepare for a mass increase in climate-linked migration as leaders battled to save a deal on global warming in Copenhagen. "Climate change and environmental degradation are already triggering migration or displacement all over the planet," the IOM warned on the critical last day of the Denmark summit, which coincides with International Migrants Day.

See the France24 story

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The Copenhagen climate change summit had been meticulously planned by the Danish hosts to produce a streamlined agreement. By the time the prime ministers and presidents began arriving, negotiators - led by a select group from the major economies - were supposed to have produced a draft agreement. All the leaders were meant to do was give their assent. Instead, leaders walked into an epic struggle over the shape of a future world economic order. Would rapidly emerging economies like China see their growth stunted by controls on greenhouse gas emissions? Would African countries and low-lying states who say they face annihilation if the warming of the atmosphere exceeds 2C get the technology and financial assistance they need to safeguard their future?

See the Guardian (UK) story

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United Nations climate envoys may drop their plan to complete a binding global-warming agreement by the end of 2010, as two weeks of talks in Copenhagen overran their deadline with no framework to forge a treaty. A draft agreement to be signed in the Danish capital omitted a requirement that nations adopt “one or more legal instruments” to fight global warming during a UN meeting planned in Mexico City in November. The 2010 limit was in an earlier draft today. “The big obstacle is the gap between developed and developing countries: We’re playing ping-pong,” Haimoude Ould Ahmed, a senator from Mauritania, said in an interview in Copenhagen. “We’ll have to prolong the talks into the night and tomorrow morning. We’re worried. We had many hopes.”

See the Bloomberg story

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President Barack Obama raced from one impromptu meeting to another and made an animated plea for compromise Friday, making plain his frustration over the difficulty of pushing world leaders to settle on a plan to combat global warming. "We are running short on time," Obama told the 193-nation summit as the clock was running out on its final day. "There has to be movement on all sides." Working into the night and putting his departure time in question, Obama scheduled a second one-on-one meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao after an earlier session of nearly an hour. Officials said the two men made a step forward in their talks, but the degree of progress was not clear.

See the story on The Street

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World leaders are locked in talks as they attempt to deliver a last-minute deal at the Copenhagen climate summit. Confusion has dominated the final scheduled day as several draft texts were circulated on Friday afternoon. The US, EU and China have not offered anything new in public, prompting fears that a meaningful deal to curb global emissions was slipping beyond reach. US President Barack Obama held a second meeting with China's premier in an effort to break the deadlock. The talks are now expected to continue late into the night.

See the BBC story

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