11 December – Protest practice run
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Dossier index
Euranet’s Mark Rodden gives an insight into the daily lives of protestors, police, delegates and shoppers at the Copenhagen conference.
Our Danish hosts have been a welcoming bunch, but one of their great fears is that all hell will break loose when activists from around the world bring their protests to downtown Copenhagen.
Police got a handy training run for that possibility this morning when up to 500 demonstrators gathered in the city centre. The main protest is tomorrow, when 60,000 people are expected to march to the Bella Centre, so you’d be forgiven for thinking protestors were doing the authorities a favour by giving them a chance to test out their planning.
It all kicked off at 10am but by 11am the streets had become quiet once again. The pedestrian shopping area at Strøget was full of locals and even (whisper it) the odd conference delegate. No doubt they were busy browsing the shops in search of that perfect Christmas present.
Even the police were chatting amiably and laughing with passers-by. But they’re unlikely to be as friendly if tomorrow’s demonstration – in keeping with the theme of the hour – gets a little bit heated.
Copenhagen’s public transport system is so efficient that it counts down by the half-minute, so it wasn’t long before us journalists got back to the Bella Centre’s media centre.
Here reporters spend most of their day by a computer, oblivious to the world outside. And given that most press conferences are streamed as webcasts, many hacks only struggle out of their seats for food or toilet breaks.
"Crossroads"
One such press briefing that was by the Africa Group, at which Dr Victor Fodeke, head of the Special Climate Unit at Nigeria's Ministry of Environment, warned that Africans hadn’t come to Denmark for “a jamboree”.
The doctor is obviously fond of a good metaphor and he said that today the world was at a “crossroads”.
“The road to success is always under construction,” he said. “If on the road you have very, very bad terrain and you have to remove rocks … they take time. And I believe that we are still in there making progress.”
Rest assured that he won’t have rushed off to listen to Professor Fred Singer of the University of Virginia and Lord Christopher Monckton, a one-time science advisor to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
They’re currently speaking at a separate conference in Copenhagen for “climate realists” – or, as some would call them, deniers - who dispute the effects of global warming.
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