Would you please tell us what are in your opinion, the major achievements of the Copenhagen Accord?
I think we’ve learned a great deal at Copenhagen about the way that we have to move forward. I would say that among the things that we learned we found that whatever agreements we come to cannot be about limiting economic growth, it has to be about the quality of economic growth and the way that it goes forward. I think we’ve also learned that it is essential to involve the Heads of State and Ministers from across the governments who are concerned about the nature of growth and are looking to alternative means to determine how they can have both economic well-being for their people and the lower carbon footprint. And I think finally we learned that it’s going to take us a while in key countries all around the world both Developed and Developing to understand these alternative pathways in a practical sense. How one grows and at the same time increases the value we get from resources in ways that do not produce the waste, the by-products, the carbon that we are doing in our current modes of industrialization. So I think we have a better sense of what the problem is and where the solutions lie if we also have at the same time an understanding that this will take time and much has to go on below the international negotiations to prepare the foundations with which nations can approach these questions with greater confidence.

What are the most critical open questions, where are the gaps, and what needs to be done before the next important meeting in Mexico?
I would say the next round of negotiations in Cancun and in South Africa the year following are basically about restoring the trust that has become broken very evidently in the negotiations. The Developing Countries do not believe that concrete actions which always involve in the short run, making investments or spending money to change infrastructure to preserve the livelihoods of people in the forests of the world. They don’t really believe these things are forthcoming. So I don’t think what is lacking right now is a grand vision. I think it is concrete progress on a couple of issues: mainly forestry, some concern with adaptation, and some money that actually begins to flow whether through fast start or not fast start funding that begins to have a promise that all of this is not just talk but really the beginnings of action.

Please tell us about CPI, and how CPI may help answer key questions, providing precious insights to the current climate change debate.
The CPI is a new organisation and it’s one that looks forward to the changing world in which I think low carbon economies are both a necessity and a political possibility. The CPI notes the fact that in China, in India, in many states in the United States even if the federal government has not acted, in Europe, there is an increasingly wide portfolio of public policies being taken. Sometimes they are regulation, like renewables mandates. Sometimes they are market instruments like the ETS, and sometimes they are public spending as we’ve seen in the various stimulus programs around the world. And like all policy, no matter how well it is designed, no matter how well it is intended, there are always questions about how it is implemented or how effective will it be. And CPI’s job is to work in many of the major Developing and Developed Countries to help everyone see whether the policies are working. And to the extend that they are doing less well than people who design them hope to work with governments and with firms and with households to try and improve the performance to achieve the goals that low carbon economies have brought to governments.