I would like to be in Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Change Conference this week but couldn't go. Here are some impressions from my good friend, Rolf Nordstrom, Executive Director of The Great Plains Institute, who is on the ground in Copenhagen:

Iarrived in Copenhagen on Monday afternoon and am still suffering a little jetlag, but I am awake enough to give you a glimpse of what the climate change conferencetaking place here these next two weeks looks and feels like, and how you mightexpect it to impact your life.

First, to give you a sense of scale, I wantyou to imagine that the vast Mall of America is filled not with shops of everykind, but with hundreds of booths from different organizations, temporaryoffices for delegates from 192 countries, vast meeting rooms set up withmicrophones and video screens, cafes, the mother of all cloak rooms, huge banksof computer stations (many with Skype and video capability built in), and thewhole place teaming with people.

Toget into this global "town hall" meeting, I waited in line with hundreds ofothers in order to get my picture taken and go through several security checkpoints. Indeed, the elaborate airport-like security system rivals any majorairline hub, complete with scanners and sniffing dogs. And all this only hintsat the scale of this gathering.

Ifyou don't follow the climate change issue closely, it may seem like thisconference in Copenhagen is coming out of thin air. But the internationalnegotiating process on climate change has been going on for a long time and takesplace through a series of meetings, each called a "Conference of the Parties to theUnited Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change" (or COP forshort). This one, COP15, is my first and by all accounts the very largest ofthem all, suggesting that concern over the world's climate has growndramatically over the past 17 years; and of course the issue of climate change hasbeen studied by scientists for decades prior to that.

High-levelministers and negotiators from all over the world meet every year to review theimplementation of the overall Convention, which was signed back in 1992 in NewYork (including by the U.S.). Its objective is "stabilization of greenhousegas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerousanthropogenic interference with the climate system."

Ifyou are a climate skeptic, being at this conference would prompt you to askyourself, "if the science behind climate change is not compelling, then how is it that essentially every major countryin the world—and many you've never heard of (think Tuvalu or Comoros), isconvinced that climate change is a real and urgent challenge? Have their scientists and elected leaders allbe hoodwinked?

Wetend to be a bit isolated in our thinking in the U.S., but a lack of strong actionon climate change has led to demonstrations in some 4,500 locations in 170countries, and more are taking place here in Copenhagen. An example yesterdayfeatured people convincingly dressed as trees being followed around by a scrumof reporters with cameras and sound booms as the tree people called for a haltto deforestation and the preservation of forests in the push for new forms ofenergy production.

Nomatter what happens here, you can expect there to eventually be aninternational agreement that places legally-binding limits on the emission ofgreenhouse gases. If I were a business, I would ask myself two questions:

  • DoI think this issue will go away? In otherwords, can we just wait it out (like a war of attrition) and hope that climatechange goes away? If your answer is "yes", what is the evidence for this view?What leads you to believe that the world will forget about climate change

Ifthe issue is not going away, then what can I do as a business (or an individualfor that matter) to position myself to flourish in a carbon-constrained world?
Ata minimum, you may want to stay informed. One good way to do that is to followthe proceedings and the U.S. government's positions here in Copenhagen throughthis official Web site: http://cop15.state.gov/uscenter/multimedia/index.htm

Rolf Nordstrom is executive director of the GreatPlains Institute, a Minnesota-based nonpartisan, nonprofitworking with Midwestern States and Canadian provinces to accelerate thetransition to a sustainable and prosperous low-carbon economy.