I grew up on Findus cuisine. Well, not quite. My mum refused to serve the frozen ready meals. But as a kid growing up in 1990s Britain, I was bombarded with adverts about the joys of frozen food.

Now Findus has come to Denmark. And I’m puzzled. Danes simply don’t have a tradition for frozen ready meals – they’re virgins in this territory. Findus isn’t just trying to enter into a new country market. It’s attempting to change an entire nation’s eating habits. I wonder if they’ll succeed on the basis of their ad campaign, which plays on Danes’ busy lives: ‘A person spends 65 days of their life chopping vegetables’, reads a poster near my house. Is this tactic enough to get a nation – increasingly organic and health-obsessed – dashing for the frozen counter?

Mmmh, not sure. I can see a market in Denmark. But a small (single male) one. Perhaps Findus has done their homework with thorough market research and will surprise us all with whopping sales. Because this isn’t about food innovation – Brits were eating this stuff years ago! It’s about identifying new product markets. And that’s not a one-size-fits-all thing. I’ll be interested to see if Findus is still here this time next year.

Today we’re accompanying Denmark’s PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the Chinese-Danish Climate Change Conference in Beijing. The atmosphere will be celebratory – he did, after all, get China on board yesterday for a climate pact goal at next year’s UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen. A well-needed triumph that’s left the Danish press whooping.

But bigger challenges lie ahead for Fogh. Denmark may be a world leader in modern energy. But we pay our way to almost half of our national C02 reductions through credit initiatives abroad. Is that visionary? Is that a good example to set to the world?

Now’s the time to solve climate challenges in our own back yard. And us designers can help reduce CO2 emissions in lots of ways. Create packaging that stacks well, so reducing transport pollution. Apply user-centred or persuasive design so people use products and services efficiently. Or, like we’re doing at the moment, designing a progressive metro so people ditch the car for public transport.

Our message to Fogh? Use designers like us. Design isn’t just about making nice-looking chairs. It can actually solve global problems, like climate change. Let’s make it happen!