Danish Conservative Prepares for Climate Debate
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: September 19, 2009

COPENHAGEN — Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s minister of climate and energy, feels little kinship with the green end of the political spectrum — people who stage sit-ins at power plants or vote for the Green parties in elections.



Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s environment minister, will play host in December to hundreds of nations in Copenhagen for the United Nations-sponsored global climate treaty negotiations.

“I’ve never understood why the environment should be a left-wing issue,” said Ms. Hedegaard, with an exasperated sigh. “In my view there is nothing as core to conservative beliefs — that what you inherit you should pass on to the next generation.”

Denmark — and Ms. Hedegaard — will play host in December to hundreds of nations that will gather in Copenhagen for the United Nation-sponsored global climate treaty negotiations. The meetings are tasked with finalizing a new global plan to tackle climate change. Ms. Hedegaard, who two years ago offered her city as the site for the negotiations, will be the president and the chairwoman of the 12-day event.

“It’s a very, very important job,” said John Hay, a spokesman for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, noting that the president of the climate meeting is the one who “hammers through the deal.”

Ms. Hedegaard, he said, “fully appreciates that role and is taking it very seriously.” The placement of Ms. Hedegaard, a lifelong conservative, at the center of the preparations reflects in large part the shifting of global environmental issues from the fringe into the political mainstream. A movement whose symbols were fuzzy endangered animals is now more concerned with oil futures and budget sheets.

Unlike Germany, the Netherlands and France, Denmark has never had a Green party, Ms. Hedegaard points out. In fact, she said, she sees herself as an environmentalist in the model of Theodore Roosevelt, a lifelong hunter who campaigned ardently for protecting natural resources.

“People say environment is a soft issue, but it’s not,” she said recently, sitting in her spartan office in a pink sweater and neatly pressed slacks. “It’s about where we get our energy from, about security, about growing economies. I’m a conservative, I worry about that.”

Blunt and no-nonsense, Ms. Hedegaard, 49, has already emerged as a producer, director, arm-twister, therapist and matchmaker for the Copenhagen meetings — Time magazine this week named her one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

In preparation for the December meetings, she is promoting her goals via Twitter and a blog. And though she does not have any official position until the conference opens on Dec. 8, she has spent the last year crisscrossing the globe — in the last few months alone, she has visited Brazil, India, China, the United States, Mexico and a number of African nations — urging reluctant countries to pony up and do their share to combat climate change.

Ms. Hedegaard arrived in Washington on Wednesday to attend the Major Economies Forum on Climate Change and to meet with officials in preparation for the Group of 20 summit meeting in Pittsburgh this week. She will then travel to New York for a climate summit meeting convened by the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, on Monday. The Danes, who have been hyperkinetically anticipating the December meetings, are holding their own “pre-summit” of environmental ministers just outside New York City this weekend.

Long viewed as something of a wunderkind, Ms Hedegaard was the youngest member of Parliament in Danish history when she was elected in 1984, at age 25. She left politics in 1990 and spent 15 years as a columnist and anchorwoman for Denmark’s top news outlets, then returned to government in 2004 as the nation’s environment minister.

Although the United Nations has held a big climate meeting each year since 1995, December’s gathering is extraordinary for many reasons. The emissions reduction commitments that countries made under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012. And while the Bush administration was seen by many countries as an obstacle to achieving a global accord, President Obama has declared that he wants to be a leader in environment issues.

Ms. Hedegaard views the moment as an opportunity that must be seized.

“Our contribution has been to try to get the parties together before it’s too late,” she said.

Still, hers is a kind of tough-love approach and, like Teddy Roosevelt, she has used her bully pulpit to be extraordinarily blunt about the kinds of concessions she expects, “putting pressure on all governments to make the political price of being an obstacle so high that no one will pay it,” she said.

For example, Ms. Hedegaard has expressed impatience with the United States, which has focused on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, the lead heat-trapping gas linked to global warming, by 2050, but has been far less clear about what it intends to do by 2020.

“It’s rather crucial that the U.S. can show a credible pathway, and the sooner we get started the more realistic it will be to achieve a goal,” Ms. Hedegaard said. “If we postpone, then we’ll have such a steep path that it may be hard or impossible to achieve.”

She is quick to point out that the United States emits twice as much carbon dioxide per capita as Denmark, without gaining anything in quality of life.

Ms. Hedegaard would also like fast-developing countries like India and — especially — China to commit in some way to limiting their emissions, noting that by 2020 two-thirds of emissions will come from countries now considered developing nations.

“China and other emerging nations must accept it even if it isn’t fair,” she said, adding, “I get it. If I were a developing country I would say, ‘Why should I do this?’ They are feeling the consequences of climate change first and foremost. And they didn’t create the situation.”

But, she said, “it’s just an arithmetic fact that if China and India continue at the current rate they’ll use up the whole global carbon space in a very short time.”

Ms. Hedegaard’s no-nonsense style has raised some hackles, and some United Nations officials have said they worry that developing nations might feel strong-armed by her pronouncements, since she is supposed to be a neutral host and is not a negotiator. But some negotiators say they are grateful for the Danish efforts.

“It is entirely appropriate,” said Todd Stern, lead negotiator for the United States. “Connie is working hard, as is the prime minister’s office.”

Good or bad, any climate agreement that comes out of the December meeting will bear Copenhagen’s name. And the tenor of the meetings is likely to reflect Denmark’s sober brand of environmentalism. The government has proposed new fines to keep activists in check during the meetings — $2,000 for breaking through a police cordon or wearing a mask during demonstrations— and the penalties have angered grass-roots groups.

But the conference, in the end, is not about Denmark, Ms. Hedegaard said.

“Of course we’re investing a huge amount in hosting this event and we’re working hard for a success,” she said. “But Denmark doesn’t decide that. The major economies will decide whether it works or not.”