The event that resulted in this volume took place in Copenhagen in June 2008: a trade and climate change seminar hosted by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The German Marshall Fund, IISD and the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development.
We were brought together because of the urgency of global climate change. Climate change and its twin, energy policy, are likely to be the most intractable economic issues facing the world for first few decades of this century. The reasons for this are becoming more and more apparent. The 2007 assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, confirms that global warming is taking place and that it is virtually certain that it is caused by human activities. And it urges governments to take immediate action. Other clarion calls have followed, from the Secretary-General of the United Nations, from the European Union, from non-governmental organizations and even from leaders of countries long considered holdouts against an active climate change agenda.