COP15 Post | News from the UN Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009

So, we’re onto the final stretch of the conference and things seem to be degenerating faster than a Greenland glacier. The fiasco at the Bella Center whereby thousands of NGO delegates suddenly found themselves uninvited to the party was probably the moment when everyone realised that these negotiations were getting serious – too serious to allow distractions by noisy interlopers intent on making the voice of the common man heard.

Then we had Gordon Brown announcing that, no, there probably wouldn’t be a meaningful deal struck. He can save the global financial system from meltdown, but saving the icecaps from doing so was probably going to be too much of a tall order.

And to top it all, the announcement that Connie Hedegaard, a woman of integrity, had ‘stepped down’ as COP15 President, handing the job over to her boss Lars Løkke Rasmussen, smelled of rotten fish. She assured us that her resignation was merely ‘procedural’, although nobody can actually recall her being appointed as the ‘temporary president’. Rumours of a bust-up are rife, and it’s not the first time speculation has been raised over the relations between these two politicians’ offices. Presumably it was decided that all these important heads of state – some from countries with, er, traditional views on things – needed a man to preside over them on their visit.

So, as I write, there are helicopters hovering over the office, police riot vans screaming through the nearby streets and disgruntled protesters forming a flash mob in the car park: a rotten day. To top it all I went down to City Hall Square to see the light go off for Earth Hour and, lo and behold, half the city goes black and the only thing you can see is the giant globe – still illuminated! And what was it illuminated with? An advert for Siemens of course. God bless corporate sponsorship.

This post was brought to you by Hopenhagen.

As we enter the second week of COP15 things are beginning to take form.  If the opening week was characterised by posturing and uncertainty, this week looks to be heading towards an agreement of some sort – albeit one that will be unsatisfactory to many. Details of the first draft texts are sketchy, but it seems to be agreed that the richer so-called ‘developed’ nations will shoulder the brunt of the cuts, with the larger emerging economies also taking on some of the cuts.

All of this contains the hidden assumption that to decarbonise an economy will restrict its growth. It needn’t – we just need to think about how we define the term ‘growth’. At present, growth is narrowly calculated in terms of the monetary value of whatever is traded. It’s a crude instrument for making policy decision on and there’s indisputable evidence now that increased growth levels in rich countries don’t add to its citizens’ wellbeing (a word economists detest – ‘It’s so subjective!’ they cry) and may in fact be causing us harm.

So given that we know economic growth – as measured by GDP – is bad for us consumed-out Westerners, and has the added side-effect of destroying the future of our planet, isn’t it about time for a rethink? The author Stephen Harding hit the mark when he differentiated two types:  intelligent growth and suicidal growth.

Intelligent growth considers the physical limits of our planet and includes a range of indicators to measure how we are doing. It’s slightly warm and fuzzy but undeniably intelligent and moral – a kind of Archbishop Rowan Williams of an economic theory. Suicidal growth, as you might have guessed, is the path we’re still embarked upon i.e. an ever-accelerating machine for turning primary resources into landfill at whatever the cost. It makes a few people very rich, but makes a lot of people very poor – an economic model Machiavelli would have been proud of.

So the question is: which type of growth would you like to sign up for?

We’re only at the end of day three of the conference and already the police are getting a bit jumpy. On my way home late last night I was passed by a procession of riot vans and fire engines, sirens screaming, and all heading in the direction of the Bella Center. Despite the hour I decided to follow them and see what all the fuss was about and I soon noticed an acrid smell in the air. Looking up, I saw clouds of smoke billowing into the night sky.
In the event it just turned out to be some poor soul’s flat which had caught fire, but that didn’t prevent about sixty riot police turning up, ready for action. Several hours later these same police would be forcing their way into a Climate Justice Action safe house looking for ‘weapons’. What they found was a box of wire cutters, some balloons filled with paint and a collection of colourfully decorated wooden shields. At first it seemed like they had made a mistake and raided a kindergarten preparing for their annual Christmas play. The police spokesman seemed confused by the stash saying that these were the most ‘peculiar’ weapons they had seen in a while.

The Climate Justice Action crowd were understandably annoyed at being hauled out of their sleeping bags at 3am and said, in a peevish statement, that they had previously been on good terms with the police. Their cooperation, it was stated, had been strong up till then, although it is difficult to imagine how exactly one cooperates with the police in planning acts of civil disturbance. But then this is Denmark where, seemingly, anything can and does happen.

And one can forgive the police for being so jumpy. Many of them are new-recruits and almost all of them seem to have been drafted in from Jutland (the larger part of the country, tacked on to northern Germany). A common taunt of anarchic Copenhageners when faced with riot police is ‘Go back to Jutland’ said in a peculiar accent, which does nothing but hurt the cops’ feelings and makes them all the more eager to use the new jet-powered water cannon they have recently been showing off on television.

Although they claim the new piece of kit is to put out the fires caused by Molotov cocktails, it has the useful added benefit of being able to pump out water at such a high pressure that it knocks the disobediently-inclined over like ninepins. Bookies across Denmark have been offering odds on whether the police will use it to put out fiery buildings or fiery feelings. What would you bet on?

So, the great climate conference in the sky has kicked off after a build-up – if you’re a Copenhagener – of about two years. People woke up on the first morning to a damp fog covering the city, causing the young police officers stationed outside the Bella Center to shiver in their boots. After the excitement of the previous day’s bomb scare – which turned out to be a jetlagged Cameroonian woman’s suitcase left on a train – the police were taking no chances, causing massive lines of chilled delegates and journalists to form in the pre-dawn gloom.

It wasn’t until they all got inside that things started hotting up again, and the emotional speech made by a woman from Fiji in one of the opening addresses set the tone for the day and focussed delegates’ minds on the seriousness and immediacy of the issues at hand.

One theme of the climate conference that is going to prove key to the success of the talks is the issue of cooperation. And it’s good to see that, so far, people have been working together to make this happen. Taking the Copenhagen Post offices as a microcosm, we have seen our normal staff of around 16 mushroom exponentially.  Last time I looked around to do a headcount there were about 35 of us.

Aside from partnering with the good folks at Klimaforum, who are quite happily located in an office next to ours in the meatpacking district (Kødbyen – literally ‘meat city’) we are honoured to be hosting ten young international journalists from the Danish School of Media and Journalism who are currently stationed in our office kitchen. Apart from getting in the way whenever we want to make coffee, the students are pounding the climate beats and producing a great amount of stories and photos that otherwise would not have been published in printed format.

And aside from the journalists and climate activists, we’re partnering with a host of other people, from cartoonists to bloggers, as well as being lucky enough to have a small army of volunteers willing to get up way before the crack of dawn every morning to transport this newspaper by bike, train and electric golf buggy to the four corners of the city and beyond.

It’s amazing what can be achieved with a bit of cooperation and goodwill.  Now let’s hope the politicians take note too.