There is Hope in Copenhagen…

As the COP 15 meeting opened this morning, the city of Copenhagen renamed itself ‘Hopenhagen’, reflecting its goals for action at the climate change conference and, so far, it looks like there may be plenty to be hopeful about.

The conference was launched with speeches from the world’s major climate change figures. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, who heads the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was one of the first to speak, saying the COP was “A historically important meeting …which we all hope will lead to action.”

Dr. Pachauri’s 2008 call for the world to eat less meat, made at Compassion’s Peter Roberts Memorial Lecture (covered by the BBC here), was echoed today in a groundbreaking global newspaper editorial, carried by the UK’s Guardian newspaper and a total of 56 papers in 45 countries, saying that, to combat climate change…”Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles… We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently.”

Within the COP conference, Compassion has been working hard to get our key messages across: that we need humane and sustainable farming and to reduce meat consumption. Our reports have flown off the shelves and, personally, I feel like I’ve walked ten miles through this small-town-sized conference and spoken to hundreds of people, from arctic climatologists to activists and UN personnel. Lasse will be raising our profile further online and in the media, as he’s secured an interview on climatechange.tv for Thursday – make sure you check it out when it is available to watch online later that day.

While we can’t expect too much for farm animals in the formal COP negotiating process this year, there is plenty of opportunity to influence the longer term agenda, from discussions of the European Union’s agriculture research priorities to international farming events. And there are 15,000 people here for Compassion to meet, so I’d better get going…here’s to making this a ‘Hopenhagen’ for farm animals too.