Thousands of climate activists are gathering outside of London for a week-long protest called Climate Camp, urging big business and government to engage in strong and direct action to prevent further climate change. As the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference draws nearer, opinions are mixed as to how to treat emissions targets.

While protesters want fast and hard emissions cuts, people like John Prescott, Britain's former deputy prime minister, say the key may be to actually loosen emissions goals to ensure that an agreement can be made -- not exactly something that green campaigners want to hear.

Prescott was instrumental in negotiating and sealing the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, and there are few as deeply entrenched in energy policy as he is. And he's saying that, "Securing a deal at Copenhagen will be 10 times more difficult than Kyoto."

Striking a deal and reaching a global consensus at Copenhagen, even if it means loosening time tables and cutting goals, is even more crucial than it was in Kyoto.

"A lot of people fear that if you moved away from those targets you would get the NGOs screaming and shouting, 'you have sold out', but I had to ignore them to get the deal at Kyoto," Prescott explained. Getting nations on board ideologically, even if not empirically, is what Copenhagen must aim for. 

While the pressure placed on governments and businesses from NGO's and groups of protesters like those of Climate Camp can prove effective, the reasoning and expertise of figures like Prescott is what's needed to get richer countries in line to cut their emissions.

And the U.S. is certainly going to need a lot of coaxing: Prescott is saying that emissions cuts need to be made on a per-capita basis, making goals easier for countries like China but far more difficult on the U.S.