After a long day the Bella Center, our research team attended a WWViews side event that was happening at the Klimaforum, a Danish side conference aimed at providing a venue for civil society and other groups that didn’t have access to the COP meeting. (If you don’t know what WWViews is, check out WWViews.org! Briefly, it was a citizen’s deliberation project I worked on that brought together groups of citizens around the world to discuss their policy recommendations for climate change.) The event consisted of a panel with 2 participants, one from Viet Nam and one from Egypt; 2 public policy and participation experts; and two politicians, one a young Finnish Member of Parliament, and a Danish cabinet member...

I loved hearing from the participants. The Vietnamese woman was young, but spoke very eloquently of how her WWViews experience provided her with a chance to meet people from all over her country. She said she had known some about climate change theoretically, but she learned how it practically affected the daily lives of farmers and costal dwellers. The Egyptian woman, who was from Cairo, said that everyone should be involved in a project like this, in order to understand all the work that goes into formulating compromises between all peoples and policy that satisfies as many as possible.   

The Finnish MP, a young man with three visible piercing, spoke more bluntly than I thought was possible from a politician, laying out how something like WWViews could be more effective politically. He spoke of the importance of media presence as well as timing—timing surrounding decision making events like COP15 but also scheduling protests, meetings, and for a around election schedules. He confirmed my theory that most political action here in Copenhagen is being completely ignored by the delegations, who have been sent with strict political mandates as to their stance in the negotiations.

This reality hasn’t kept the entirety of Copenhagen from becoming a stage for political protest. In my explorations of the city center last Sunday, I couldn’t turn a corner without seeing a 50 foot tall inflatable potted plant, or an ice sculptor fashioning a polar bear in front of congress, or enormous tree roots spread around a museum courtyard, or bright pink, world shaped piggy banks surrounding a metro stop. As potentially ineffective as it might be, the scene created is certainly beautiful, with the colored displays placed against a background of dramatic Danish architecture, street-lined canals, and the persistent low hanging clouds. Around the entire city, there are climate mazes, billboard advertisements (Siemens, Shell, and Coca Cola are the ones I’ve seen the most of—talk about big business and greenwashing), and countless informational displays and banners

As one approaches the Bella Center, the actual protests increase, with groups mostly comprised of students chanting, singing songs, and marching. I’ve actually been pretty surprised by the lack of large scale protest—I’ve never been blocked from entering the center, just pursued by some very persistent activists with handouts. I have, however, heard news of groups over a thousand strong that are planning on “taking over” the center within a few days, when Ministers and more important negotiators arrive. I’m disappointed I’ll be missing that, but I don’t envy the rest of my party, who will probably have to wait in even longer lines to enter the Center!