A Halton Does Copenhagen Blog Entry

We have arrived in Copenhagen, and have already experienced a great deal but have had difficulty finding a stable internet connection. Today has been a chaotic and frustrating day for COP-15 on two fronts:

1. Organizationally. We have been to a great deal of conferences, meeting, concerts, sporting events, even busy airports in our lives in which a great deal of people needed to squeeze into a small area. But we have never seen anything like we did this morning. People were herded like sheep with no order, standing in front of the gates in the freezing cold. No messages were given about what was happening, and the line stretched as far as the eye could see. In four hours of waiting, a total of 6 people got into the conference that did not previously have badges or did not have special designation from the U.N. This includes media who were standing in line with camera equipment and had no special entrance. Think for a second about how this will reflect on the conference with the major sources of information to the outside world not able to enter the conference. If not for the second development of the day (talked about next), the entire day would have been dedicated to discussing this.

2. Development number two is just breaking now – we’ve heard whispers of it around the conference that the rift is growing larger between developing and developed nations. Today, developing nations reportedly walked out on discussions – temporarily halting them. This seems to be the major theme to this point in the conference and one that does not seem to be heading towards a solution. We will touch upon why we think a climate deal can actually help the developing world based on our discussion with Paul Martin in the following posting.

In the meantime we are still waiting for access to the Bella Centre – we are finding plenty to engage ourselves with in the meantime, but are hoping things get more organized soon. Over the next couple days we will be hearing from mayors of municipalities about their thoughts on Climate Change, examine some of Malmo’s waterfront redevelopment, and take a tour of some of Denmark’s offshore windfarms.

Stay Tuned!