shortly after on september he hosted a summit on climate change to promote leaderlevel engagement in the final push towards a global agreement in copenhagen the summit presided over by danish prime minister lars lokke rasmussen attracted what was then the largestever number of heads of state and government to gather and focus specifically on climate change while negotiations made little progress throughout the fall the unprecedented engagement of global leaders the private sector and civil society on the issue the unequivocal urgency of the issue according to science and the election of barack obama as united states president led many to think that an ambitious outcome to cop was assured while this was beginning to change world leaders still lacked confidence about what or how their country could contribute to climate change mitigation in addition deep mistrust prevailed between developed and developing countries