Those who had predicted in the lead up to the fifteenth Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) that ‘something rotten awaits us in the Kingdom of Denmark’ were vindicated on December 19 when the international community took note of the Copenhagen Accord. The Copenhagen Accord can plausibly be characterized as ‘rotten’ not just because it is weak and will not contain climate change in its current form, but also because even in this weak form it faces considerable legal and procedural challenges to its operationalization. As a definitive answer to the climate challenge the accord leaves much to be desired.