Government and consumer reactions to climate change should be of concern to all businesses.

The probability of greater regulation of industry offers both opportunities and threats. Some – mainly established players – will suffer from increased costs, but there may also be the prospect of increased income for those who can develop new technologies, or who brand themselves as ecologically friendly, or who can play the system for research grants.

Already the big oil companies are rebranding themselves as energy companies and emphasising in their advertisements their – relatively insignificant – research into renewable sources of supply.

Whatever your views, it is hard not to be cynical when you see thousands of politicians, lobbyists, and journalists flying, all on expenses, to a huge, high-tech media presentation in Copenhagen in the name of saving the planet. If human action is necessary to save the planet – and if it is not already too late – this is definitely not the sort of action that is required.

Watching the start of the Copenhagen meeting live on the internet – an irony itself lost on many – the striking image is of the attractive Danish Girls Choir doing what might, in other circumstances, be called a warm up number.

It is a basic advertising technique: associate images of attractive people with your product and the customers will buy into it because they want to associate themselves with attractive people.

Politicians have long used this technique. Indeed, there seems to be a rule: the more attractive the people, the less attractive the regime – Soviet and Nazi propaganda was full of buxom rosy cheeked young women and muscular square jawed young men. More recently, the Treaty of Lisbon was rejected by Irish voters after pro-Treaty politicians put their own faces on their posters. The Irish then held a second vote, in which the politicians were replaced on pro-Treaty posters by pretty young models, and the Treaty passed.

If our governments really do believe in climate change – and their actions do not accord with their words on that point – there must be less razzmatazz, fewer advertising tricks, and more honesty.