The square next to City Hall holds an enormous floating globe with streaming 3-D video projection featuring news updates and climate change facts. The effect is quite staggering.
A temporary museum set up by the government shows Copenhagen’s energy conservation and efficiency projects, and highlights several “future cities”– places like London, Los Angeles, Jakarta, and Mexico City– that are investing in massive sustainable infrastructure improvements, like two-story bicycle parking garages.
The Hopenhagen campaign, which promotes eco-friendly companies and business approaches to solving climate change, has plastered the city with billboards. Their message of hope can be found at bus stops, inside the metro stations and on the sides of buildings throughout the city.
In one plaza, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has shipped in a massive block of ice to demonstrate climate warming. As the block slowly melts away, a polar bear skeleton is revealed. WWF is also exhibiting art and films about the disappearing cultures of native Arctic peoples.
Everywhere you turn, the imminent specter of global warming stares you in the face, but–everywhere you look– someone is dancing, waving a flag, giving a speech, handing you a flyer, making a difference for this world in peril.
After threading through throngs of people in the streets and taking some bread and coffee for breakfast, we hopped on the metro out to Copenhagen University for the YouNGO (Youth NGO) meeting. Representatives from a multitude of youth groups met to plan various actions, and Quentin, Corie, Emma and I listened eagerly.
After threading through throngs of people in the streets and taking some bread and coffee for breakfast, we hopped on the metro out to Copenhagen University for the YouNGO (Youth NGO) meeting. Representatives from a multitude of youth groups met to plan various actions, and Quentin, Corie, Emma and I listened eagerly.
This year, the Youth have been approved as an official constituency by the United Nations Secretariat, due to the fact that climate change will mostly impact our generation most severely. The truth is that elected representatives are making decisions now that will have effects long after they are dead and gone, and we the youth will inherit this Earth, in whatever state its in. As a U.N. constituency, Youth can hold press conferences inside the Bella Center, ask questions in State Department meetings, and release proposals for how the treaty should proceed. Corie and I filmed an interview with an organizer for the American youth delegations in Copenhagen. These delegations consist of more than 300 people, out of 2000 youth at the conference. The United States has more young people here than any other nation.
A quick stop at the hostel to warm up, then back to the freezing streets. In Hopenhagen Plaza we got on stationary bikes and powered a Christmas tree’s lights with our renewable human energy. Then we made the trek to the alternative People’s Climate Summit (Klimaforum). This incredible space provides panels, films and exhibits that seek to supplement the U.N. activities, and give those not certified to enter the negotations a chance to share ideas.
A quick stop at the hostel to warm up, then back to the freezing streets. In Hopenhagen Plaza we got on stationary bikes and powered a Christmas tree’s lights with our renewable human energy. Then we made the trek to the alternative People’s Climate Summit (Klimaforum). This incredible space provides panels, films and exhibits that seek to supplement the U.N. activities, and give those not certified to enter the negotations a chance to share ideas.
Stomachs rumbling, we quickly located the banquet tent and purchased a cheap vegan dinner, homecooked and delicious. Full and happy, we entered the main lecture hall, where parliament members and activists from Australia, Canada, France and Brazil discussed solutions to the climate problem that weren't even on the table at the official negotations: keeping carbon dioxide to 350 parts-per-million in the atmosphere, capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, and demanding that rich countries pay billions of dollars in “climate reparations” to the poor countries most affected by climate change.
Frustration with the UN process was tangible, as soon the panel degenerated into a pulpit for ranting and raving. I think everyone here agreed with the necessity of the strong demands listed above, but what we lacked was a concrete method to push them into the COP15 dialogue–angry yelling accomplished nothing.
Disenchantment aside, KilmaForum is an inspiring place, and tomorrow we will return to hear more of the views that are being shut out of the “official” negotations–the views held by ordinary people not bound by any political restrictions.
I’ve never had busier and more inspiring days than these two in Copenhagen, and still four more to go! I feel like I’m in another world, one where everyone really, truly cares about the gravest problem we face, and where the passion to work toward a solution is so apparent. What's needed is to take this Copenhagen climate world and remake the rest of the planet in its image.
-Andrew Dunn
I’ve never had busier and more inspiring days than these two in Copenhagen, and still four more to go! I feel like I’m in another world, one where everyone really, truly cares about the gravest problem we face, and where the passion to work toward a solution is so apparent. What's needed is to take this Copenhagen climate world and remake the rest of the planet in its image.
-Andrew Dunn
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