It is time to rethink tomorrow, says Novozymes CEO Steen Riisgaard. Within a few years, he writes, advances in biotechnology will enable us to begin using biomass to replace oil in everything from fuels to chemicals, plastics, packaging, and pharmaceuticals.

As economic gloom continues, today's key question is whether we can turn crisis into opportunity and lay the foundation for a low-carbon economy that creates jobs, fosters innovation, and advances economic efficiency, argues U.N. Global Compact head Georg Kell.*

In his latest "Copenhagen Countdown" post, Meilstrup argues that without a firm short-term emissions target, grand visions of cuts by 2050 are irrelevant. Europe's example proves cuts are doable, but the finish line of the first stage must be in sight, not decades away.

As 2008 closed, the plodding progress in Poznan was put in stark relief by the release of three new reports documenting the alarming disappearance of ice in the Arctic. Let us resolve that 2009 be the year we finally heed warnings from scientists desperately trying to shake us into taking action.*

For a global deal on climate change to be realistic in Copenhagen, the EU has to get its gear together in its own deal. Joan Ruddock, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the UK at the newly created Department of Energy and Climate Change, tells the Climate Community she sees no other way.

In this second "Copenhagen Countdown" post, Meilstrup comments on a week that was "one of the best in a long time" on the road to a strong climate treaty in Copenhagen. He also addresses the need for leadership, some of it coming, he notes, from the CCC's just-launched Thought Leadership Series.

Editor's Note: The following was delivered by Li Xiaolin to a Business Roundtable hosted by the Copenhagen Climate Council in Beijing last month. Xiaolin, CEO of China Electric Power Intl., says technology transfer from the rich world to the developing one is critical to any global climate deal.

Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of dispatches to come from our Climate Director, Per Meilstrup. In the coming months, Per's "Copenhagen Countdown" will give you an insider's look at the run-up to COP15, and he'll assess the odds for success in Copenhagen, in December 2009.

Next year's climate conference in Copenhagen won't just be about the climate. The real task will be to establish a new world order. We need a new mindset, one that changes the focus from dealing out emissions quotas to sharing the possibilities*.

Faced with the prospect of a prolonged economic downturn, some governments may think it prudent to scale back their carbon cutting; on the contrary, it is vital to send a clear signal that carbon regulation is here to stay, say these four international business leaders.

"There is glue out there and we will find it," Thomas Becker, Denmark's chief climate negotiator, recently told the Climate Community. The Bali Agreement lays out the path to replace the Kyoto Protocol, and there are signs that point to hope that an agreement will be struck in Copenhagen in 2009.

Today, at the Climate Community, Dr. Steve Chu, one of the world's leading climate researchers, issued the most serious warning against global warming yet offered by the scientific community. Copenhagen Climate Council Founder Erik Rasmussen says we ignore Chu's clarion call to action at our peril.