World Wide Views Presentation

A few days ago I attended the presentation of the World Wide Views project as sponsored by the Climate Consortium of Denmark. The one-and-a-half hour programme presented the research proposal, its results, a few individuals who had participated in the project, and a panel of experts for discussion. I was asked to observe the audience during the presentation in order to further the project’s research of assessing the public’s response to climate change information.

At 3 PM, we began with a welcome by Lars Kluver, director of the Danish Board of Technology, and jumped right into an introduction of the project by Bjorn Bedsted, the Project Manager at the DBT and head coordinator of World Wide Views. WWV held 44 meetings in 38 countries, with about 100 citizens at each meeting. The audience at the presentation seemed to be of comparable size, and included a wide range of attendees, from students, to nongovernmental observers, to media personnel with TV camera setups, to seemingly official delegates. There was a cafe located close behind the presentation space which also drew some onlookers, as well as a heavily trafficked walkway running alongside.

At 3:10 PM, we watched a documentary about the WWV project. Most audience members were very attentive during the documentary, even putting away their laptops to pay more close attention. Passersby on the walkway slowed down, but few stopped. However, as the documentary progressed, audience members began to get restless, and started to talk amongst themselves and read their information booklets. At the conclusion of the documentary, there was widespread appreciative clapping.

Mr. Bjorn Bedsted continued with a presentation about the results of the WWV project at 3:25. The audience perked up once more, and began taking notes and pictures. They enjoyed watching the citizens in the videos presenting the results, and seemed more disinterested when Mr. Bedsted resumed speaking. Many people are joining to watch the presentation from the cafe or the walkway, but they are standing in the back rather than seeking a seat near the front. Once the results presentation had dragged on awhile, people began reading the official results booklet again as well as talking amongst themselves and on their cell phones.

The panel debate began at 3:45 pm, and many of the standing audience members had dwindled away by this time. The audience is no longer reading the results booklet for a diversion but consulting the daily programme, perhaps to find another activity to attend later. This disinterest may be due to the malfunctioning of the microphones of several members of the panel, which is making it difficult to understand them and pay attention. The passersby from the walkway are no longer slowing down to watch the presentation– which is understandable, as a documentary may be more momentarily interesting than  a seated panel.

I have inserted this gallery of pictures from the event to provide a visual extension of the notes I took on audience reactions.

NGO Party

Climate activists know how to get down, that is all I have to say. I did not bring my camera so there is no recording of the event… and perhaps that is for the best. Off to 4 more hours of sleep!

China/US Youth Party

So whenever Josh and I hear “free food!” at this party… we come running, like any good college student in Copenhagen on a food budget. Last night, this led us to the China/US youth delegations mixer/press conference planning party someplace in downtown Copenhagen, which was a TON of fun.

The Chinese delegation kids are amazing. They actually have a similar story to us– a month ago, the Chinese government said that it wanted to up Chinese youth representation at COP15 by a factor of 50– okay, that’s just my dramatic way of saying that they were ticked off that they only had 1 youth delegate at COP14 and wanted to match some of the other developed nations who brought dozens of kids. So, China, in some sort of mad rush crazy awesome powerness, manages to pull everything together at the last minute and take these 50 kids from their national youth climate action network all the way to Copenhagen. They have done some incredible things in their country, and I have the utmost respect for their work.

And their food! We were served delicious Chinese food and then broke into discussion groups and talked about our own roads to COP15 and how we got involved in the environmental movement. I met a Fullbright Scholar, a reporter from the Washington Post who interviewed us, a guy studying at the Nicholson School of Enviromental Studies at Duke, and a guy who founded his own huge nonprofit to help young people pressure Congress more successfully. Lots of business card trading, understand. We also talked about the differences in Chineseand American approaches to climate legislation, made a ton of new friends, and generally had a fantastic time. And I got this amazing set of personal eco-friendly chopsticks that y’all are going to be so jealous of…

These COP15 youth delegates are always at work…

The Chinese delegation gave the US this gorgeous “good fortune for climate change” scroll at the end of the night.

My exciting chopsticks!

How COP15 Watched Obama’s Peace Prize Acceptance

Since I’m sure a lot of you watched this on YouTube or something at home, I thought I’d share what I saw when I walked past the EU pavilion yesterday afternoon… this is how the crazy intense negotiators of COP15 take a “TV break”:

Alien Transformation

So I had to compete with Josh’s amazing protest story from yesterday, and I found the perfect way to do it: Wednesday night I went with a small group of random COP15 peeps to visit Christiania, and they started talking about their work with Avaaz, which is a grassroots climate activist organization for youth. They’ve been walking around the conference trying to talk to delegates and pressure them to sign a binding, fair, and ambitious treaty– and they’re drawing attention by dressing up as aliens. I was asked to participate in this venture, and gracefully accepted the offer.

So, this is what happened this morning. We were focusing on getting a meeting with the Japanese delegation, because they haven’t presented their development aid proposal yet and if it’s good enough, it can push the overall total to $200 billion by 2020 which would be a huge asset to combating climate change in developing countries and really speed up the momentum of these negotiations. So, after getting dressed up, I spent the next 3 hours walking around the Climate Conference saying  “Japan can break the negotiations deadlock with an ambitious development aid package! Where is Japanese climate leadership in Copenhagen?” and “Take me to your climate leader!”

Dutch Deputy Head of Delegation Speaks on COP15

This is me being a photojournalist 🙂

The Holland House (pretty much the hangout booth for Dutch people at COP15… always has free delicious food, beer, some sort of presentation, and excitement) got a surprise yesterday when members of the Dutch delegation walked in around 7 pm and said they’d love to do a little impromptu Q&A session. So, here’s me recording

Yes, that means CHEESEHUNTER!!!

Please enjoy Mr. Sanne Kaasjager explaining a little about how COP15 works, why negotiations are difficult, how he feels about the progress at Copenhagen and optimism for a binding treaty… enjoy the Dutchness!

Organize to be Heard Contest

I just got an e-mail forwarded to me from the US youth delegation telling me about this contest.

Grand prize? The top youth organizers get a trip to Washington, D.C. to meet with senators and represent our generation’s voice in the discussion on clean energy legislation.

Pretty much, you register on this website, and then you win points for the type of outreach you do– getting friends to join, writing letters, or organizing a local media event.

Just spreading the word 🙂 More info at http://consequence09.org/challenge/

How We Sneak In To COP15

I’m not quite sure if we’re allowed to post these online, but they’re much too cool not to share. These are Josh and mine’s official observer badges, which let us wander around this amazing conference all day and get into all sorts of cool stuff… we were AMAZINGLY lucky in getting them the first day. No lie, we showed up at 5 pm, the accredidation was supposed to stop at 6 pm, but they locked the doors behind us and we were last in line. And we had snuck in a side door instead of waiting in the 4 hour queue on the other side of the building… although honestly, that’s more due to us being lost than devious 😉 but I digress…

Give Peace a Chance

In honor of the anniversary of John Lennon’s death, on Tuesday, December 8, the youth groups at COP15 organized this demonstration:

The Difference Between You and Me

I have been waiting forever to write this post, so I finally have my camera connector at COP15 with me so I can upload these videos.

I have attended 2 plenary sessions so far. These are party debates of official UN bodies which are open for observers to go… observe. Or take a nap, as I did, because plenary, quite honestly, is the most extremely dull, bureaucratic snoozefest I have ever experienced. I can’t imagine getting anything done in a situation where your meeting starts half an hour late, every speaker has to be recognized by the chair, and has to thank the UN for allowing them permission to speak (gag), and really has to go through an entire unnecessary list of procedures before actually saying something worthwhile.

BUT, China attempted to do just that yesterday, when it protested the way that the UN had swept in and cut down on its “dangerous” wind power installations, reducing its renewable energy mitigation efforts, while continuing to give European nations free reign in the FIT sector. The unequal distribution of CDM’s is a huge snark at this conference– understandable, as the fact is that over 70% of all successful FIT tariff proposals are located in just 3 countries (and no one will name who they obviously are). Anyhow, here is the Chinese delegate, callin’ out the plenary president with the swagga of a college kid… or something.

Well, that was plenary.

Now for the real stuff. Just compare and contrast this bit.

Josh and I are learning that it’s not what happens in the discussion hall that’s truly interesting at COP, but what happens outside. With real side events, real issues, real people, and real changes. And, apparently, they know how to throw quite the party: this is the nongovernmental organization protest, which took place just outside the same plenary, against the UN treatment of the Tuvalu issue:

Police escorts, crazy red hats, and everything. Thank you for showing ’em how it’s done 🙂