As intergovernmental conferences (IGC) go, it could not get much bigger, or, many argue, more important. The United Nations Copenhagen Climate Change Conference has started. At a mundane level, anyone who wants to get an idea of what London will be like during the 2012 Olympics should check out Copenhagen. Any remaining hotel rooms were snapped up as soon as the US president announced he was coming to town. Room rates started at $500 (£306) and went through the roof, congestion and security traffic control will make normal movement impossible for ordinary citizens while the whole logistics of an IGC are a carbon nightmare, however you look at it.

It is far too early to do anything other than guess as to whether the conference will be a success. Rest assured there will be an outcome. Whether that outcome will be meaningful, and lead to a real, verifiable deal on actual cuts in greenhouse gas emissions is unclear.

What is clear is that this will be the first IGC following the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty. EU member states act at IGC’s on a sovereign member state basis, but there is considerable EU co-ordination and leadership with Andreas Carlgren, Sweden’s environment minister as the lead negotiator under the rotating EU presidency system. The commission itself is present in force, led by environment commissioner Stavros Dimas and nearly 300 staff.

Copenhagen affords an opportunity for Europe to shine and to prove it can co-ordinate member states’ interests effectively as well as act on the global stage. How can it do this? First, one of the big political issues at Copenhagen will be transfer payments from rich to developing countries to help them adapt. Transfer payments underpin EU finances. People tend to not mind paying monies when economic times are good, but that is not the case now. Any transfer payment system has to be based on real, verifiable and transparent processes. Europe needs to press for effective systems and stop a repeat of the UN “Oil for Food” type scheme. The long EU experience of the problems with the common agricultural policy and social funds should help remove the underlying dangers of fraud.

Second, combined with the right underpinning for any transfer system Europe needs to be vocal in championing free trade over protectionism. At Copenhagen it needs to take the lead in standing up to the anti-industrial and anti-capitalism tendencies of many of the environmental campaigning groups. Trade and not aid will allow developing countries to prosper. That points to going beyond Copenhagen to the World Trade Organisation and reducing protectionist policies.

Third, the debacle of leaked emails from my old alma mater, the University of East Anglia, has provided an important opportunity to ensure that there is freedom of access to all scientific data in this area. The withholding of source data is unacceptable. Science is science and debate and alternative hypothesis is how science progresses. Political lobbying disguised as science has to stop and a real robust science of climate change needs to develop. Denmark was home to Bjørn Lomborg, aka “The Skeptical Environmentalist”, and a fitting outcome from Copenhagen would be honesty and transparency going forward. Europe, take a lead please.

Lastly, the press activity around Copenhagen will fuel the political hot air. A shared editorial published in 56 papers from 45 countries (including the UK’s Guardian newspaper) led the charge calling for tough action on climate change. When a publication as quietly conservative as the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported the IGC as the “most important event in the world” you fear that journalists have been watching The Day After Tomorrow too often and forgotten it is a movie. Europe needs to take a lead in ensuring that there is a real, sustainable and meaningful process going forward and not just hubris.

So now Copenhagen is off and running. Andreas Carlgren has stated that China and the US must go further and propose deeper emission cuts. Come on Andreas, you can do better than that. Propose for one day of the IGC that instead of riding around in air-conditioned limousines, participants should get on the freely available bikes and look at all the very real practical actions ordinary people in Copenhagen have undertaken to change their environmental footprint. It is real people not politicians that will make a difference.