A Little About Hopenhagen

With one Goolge search, you could easily find hundreds of blogs that could help you piece together what exactly happened at the Bella Center in Copenhagen over the past two weeks (for those of you living in a turtle shell at the north pole: COP15, which attempted to ratify a replacement to the Kyoto Protcol).  I don't proclaim to be one of those blogs, because I don't think I could even begin to explain what happened to myself (if it's any clue to you, many have changed the slogan from 'Hopenhagen' to 'Nopenhagen'). Nevertheless, I saw how COP15 changed Copenhagen from the 3 months leading up to it to the raw, broken end, from the CO2PENHAGEN music festival to the clean-up of Hopenhagen Live in Rådhuspladsen.  COP15 highlighted the best and worst of the sustainability frenzy (which is a term I use quite lovingly), and it vastly affected my perspective.

I don't know at which point Copenhagen became somewhat of the epicenter for climate-change related actions, but from what I've seen, it started really kicking off around October with the launch of the Hopenhagen ad campaign to coincide with the UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) coming in December.  Before that, of course, the city had its own buzz with the world's first carbon-neutral music festival and a pledge to become carbon neutral itself by 2025.  By November, Copenhagen had been declared the greenest major European city, and its own faction of 350.org's International Day of Climate Action received a lot of press simply because, "hey, it's Copenhagen!"

And December?  That's when the madness started.  I've never had an easy time resisting the messages of good marketing, so I remained a total sucker for Coca-Cola's posters and the giant billboard in Rådhuspladsen.  Yes, even Coca-Cola, a well-known irresponsible water user (who I still adore and patronize, nonetheless), was a sponsor of Hopenhagen.  Then we were faced with the depressing feat that is the WWF's Copenhagen Ice Bear:  a polar bear ice sculpture that melted to reveal a cast of the skeleton.  Or the ads for Vestas that took over the metro and were featured prominently as the only ad on the Politiken news ticker over the two week period.  Their message?  That the world will end and the one solution is wind power.  Thank you, Vestas, for pushing only your own agenda and steeping almost as low as fear-mongering.

I guess I'm most surprised at my how my own opinions changed.  When the volley of marketing first came up, it was powerful, moving, and made me feel so excited to be in Copenhagen for this historic conference.  But I burned out by the end of week one.  This could be contributed to a parallel burn-out with school or just correlated with the obvious negative mood about the conference itself.  Either way, my attitude changed abruptly from Hopenhagen to Dupenhagen.


That being said, I'm still much more impressed with the marketing than the majority of the flood of people who invaded the city this month.  They produced one incredible thing (which I was unfortunately unable to participate in):  a 100,000-strong march for a deal on December 12, peaceful with the exception of the 700 arrested.  And then what?  You hung out at KlimaForum09 or the Climate Bottom Conference in Christiania and got all your aggravation out of your system?  Or maybe you were one of the violent protestors that continued to set the movement backwards?  Or you helped Friends of the Earth block delegates from the Bella Center because you were angry NGO's couldn't enter anymore?  This is what gets me:  everything is in disarray, and there are a handful of news articles or blogs complaining about the carbon impact of the conference itself and all the delegates' transportation, but what about the the carbon impact of the thousands who came here and did nothing productive?  I went to a presentation by the Will Steger Foundation at KlimaForum about the importance of the US Midwest in negotiation climate agreements.  I thought it was really interesting, except there was that one note about how we have to make 'fun' things like concerts to get youth involved.  I love concerts, but that's a little insulting, and I do think Hopenhagen Live was a bit of a waste (as much fun as it was to see Gogol Bordello one night).  The 'fun' is getting over-emphasized now, and democracy is overwhelming.  Power to the people, of course, but the people need to learn to chill unless they can rationally contribute, because we're now left with too many voices to be effective. 

Those of you who know me outside of this blog know I consider myself an activist, but I felt that in Hopenhagen, my only reasonable option was to take a step out of the melee.  This isn't the first time I've felt like this, and it's not a personal crisis about the purpose of life.  But it IS disconcerting and all-around disappointing.  I guess there's always COP16 to save the world . . .