As Copenhagen diminishes in the rear-view mirror, we must still do whatever we can to stop it also sinking beneath the waves.
 
What should organisations make of the Copenhagen Accord (or if you find accord just too challenging, ‘letter of intent’)? With its questionable traction, action-free plan to keep temperature rises under two degrees, vague suggestions about using the markets, technology and forests er…somehow, and unappealing invitation to all nations to record whatever voluntary commitments they’d like to make in a special register, it doesn’t exactly help you believe in Santa again. As China distances itself even from this weedy document, leaving no clear path to something more binding next year, it would be perfectly reasonable to find the whole thing pretty depressing.
 
Whether you blame Denmark, China, or the UN itself, organisations – particularly businesses - hoping that Copenhagen would bring some clarity on the carbon regime they should be planning for, will have to wait. With no clear shared targets, timetable, or approach to markets, the temptation to wait and see before making investments – and then pile into countries with weaker carbon regimes – will be hard to resist. Some companies are already making it clear that if governments were expecting them to make the big investments in the low-carbon transition, they have utterly failed to create the environment required.
 
It would be easy to throw our hands up in despair. But as with all such crises, of course, this is exactly when leadership has to stand up. As Ronan Dunne, CEO of Telefonica O2 pointed out at a recent Forum for the Future event, decisions where you can analyse the numbers for an answer don’t need leaders. Ditto moments when everyone knows what to do. It’s time to decide what you really think about it all, and take a stand.
 
But in the face of uncertainty about carbon, what’s the right leadership stance to adopt? Before COP 15 we had five arguments for action. One was that a future regulatory environment on carbon constituted a risk too potentially expensive to ignore. That one may be on hold. But the others – the arrival of peak oil; the fact that most of what you would do to decarbonise makes social and economic sense anyway; the lesson of history that responding to a constraint can drive game-changing innovation; and the awful truth that there are plenty of other, much less debatable environmental challenges already at the gate – all still stand. Now’s the time to make the most of them.
 
So the post-Copenhagen world means pushing on with pretty much all those things that made business sense at the end of November. And ultimately it means remembering that, somewhere out there in the darkness, climate change itself grinds on, indifferent to our hopes, fears and failed conferences, and still the greatest challenge facing humanity.
 
Merry Christmas!