Aaron Lake Smith's Posts
Muhammed Nasheed, the President of the Maldives.
Last night, in the Klimaforum 'people's' climate summit's large basketball stadium hall, the environmental writer Bill McKibben and the president of the island nation of the Maldives, Muhammed Nasheed, gave impassioned speeches
for an event titled "Suicide Pact or Survival Pact"?
[click title to read more]
Yesterday I got a chance to sit down with the Swedish author, David Jonstad, author of 'Our Fair Share', a book that hasn't yet been translated to English about the climate crisis and carbon budgeting. Interested readers can check out David's publisher Ordfront, which can be translated into English. David is also one of the founders of a new Swedish magazine on climate change, called Effekt.
[click title to read the interview]
Activists being arrested in Christiania last night.
Last night, developing countries and the African bloc countries grew increasingly frustrated with not being taken seriously at the COP15 Summit and almost boycotted the talks. The crisis was barely averted with an entreaty from Connie Hedegaard, the Climate Summit Minister from Denmark, who urged the countries to resume talks. Around the same time, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon scolded the climate negotiators for not making progress on a climate deal, saying, “Look in the mirror...Stop pointing fingers at others,” imploring negotiators to work more quickly and be more ambitious in trying to reach a serious binding agreement before Barack Obama arrived.
[click title to read more]
The Danish police are a ubiquitous sight and sound around Copenhagen in these two weeks of the COP15, zipping by every couple of minutes in squarish blue police vans. Yesterday, the police swept through Copenhagen's bus stops, frisking and searching the bags of all individuals who appeared to be heading towards the climate demonstration. Last night, the police were met with harsh criticism in news and public opinion after making 1,000 'preventative' arrests at the mostly-peaceful rally --all but a handful of the 1,000 were held for twelve hours and then released. This is worth discussing because nothing like this has happened in the recent history of Denmark, either in terms of the size of the rally and international presence, or in terms of the police deployment.
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100,000 peopled marched several miles and hours in the biting cold in Copenhagen today, to protest the COP15 summit. The rainbow of protestors gathered for the demonstration, titled 'Floods for Climate Justice', to display popular power and give voice to their belief that climate change should be addressed with action, not politics-as-usual. Myriad groups were present in the massive demonstration. Many used floats and soundsystems, blasting flamenco, euro-techno, reggae or Rage Against the Machine.
Entry of Copenhagen's Klimaforum, filled with periodicals.
Denmark is a country having its fifteen minutes in the global limelight. For two years, the small Scandinavian country has been preening itself with preparations for the 15th United Nation Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP15) in the way that other countries prepare for the Olympics. The Danes I am staying with tell me that they’re sick of hearing about climate—all the news, all the art exhibitions, all the movies, all climate all the time.
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