Outside the Copenhagen climate conference it was bitter cold. Inside the heavy blast walls and high fences thousands of black suited bureaucrats from across the globe rushed between plenaries, press conferences, and tiny temporary offices. According to the media and NGO observers, we were here to save the world. 
The young protesters gathering in colorful wool hats and jackets to the south were not so convinced of the Global talks good intentions. They were here to condemn the capitalist overtones of the conference and mobilize the world to learn from the climate change disaster. They wanted the world to change it’s life style, not only it’s emissions. It was a battle of pragmatism and idealism that had fundamentally shaped these negotiations over the last year and resulted in a constant high stakes confusion over what this unprecedented conference was supposed to be. Today was the day civil society inside and outside of the conference center was going to call for the true change needed to roll back the destruction we have caused. 
The Dog Bite
When I arrived at the conference on Wednesday, I was expecting a protest. I found kids fleeing police with clubs and dogs. Big police. Besides being downright mean, the police here tend to be extremely tall. Over the last few years they have become a formidable force. Unleashed by a right wing government to battle immigrants, clowns, hippies, and a national chapter of drug dealing Hell’s Angels they love a good fight. Doing my duty as a reporter I followed the fleeing youths, who by this point were being tackled beaten thrown and arrested in all manner of ways.
A few minutes later my hand was in the meat mincing jaws of a German Shepard unleashed by a seven foot tall Danish policeman. I rummaged through my pockets to find my press card. The dog held on tight. 
It took me a while, but eventually I found my UNFCCC press badge, showed it the cop and was released.The dog and his owner went their way, and I took advantage of a cold defeating state of shock to photograph the protesters interaction with the police. This involved heads being thrust into the dirt and lots of plastic zip ties.
Inside the Machine
But I wasn’t here for the protests, I was her
e with 3500 journalists from around the world to cover the world’s biggest circus, aka the-meeting-that-saved-the-world-from-imminent-destruction. Organized by the UN, the conference was supposed to be the conclusion of three years of meetings to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and help poor countries deal with the minor side effects of climate change; floods, extinctions, desertification, drought etc. But this is a difficult task. The inclusive and democratic negotiation progress of the past had been replaced by a hard pragmatic scramble to get something on paper that would look like an agreement without anybody having to agree. This meant stopping to pretend that rich would give the poor more than the Aid money they already get, or that the US would actually cut it’s emissions.
The only aspect that was moving was REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), a scheme to allow big polluters to pay for their evil ways by giving money to poor countries to not cut down the trees they have. Scheme being the operatives word. If it sounds like trouble, it’s because it is.
Just as I dropped off my jacket at the coat room inside the colossally ugly Bella center, another protest erupted out of the maze of NGO booths in hall H. The booths are the staging ground for distributing glossy brochures, advocating for the rights of the poor and wild animals, explaining to the media how certain governments (US Canada Australia and Ukraine) are screwing the treaty up, and NGOs hustling to get their hands on the billions of dollars in climate change adaption and mitigation money the rich countries might give to the poor countries. The Copenhagen climate conference is about a lot of things, but a big focus is money. Money for carbon credits, money for saving forests, money for electric cars, money for alternative energy, money to pay off the rich leaders of the poor countries for the guilt of the western world for causing the mess, and money to ease the way into our carbon free future. 
Surrounded by a thick scrum of media,the country delegates and activist NGOs chant and squint in the bright light of the video cameras trying to find the exit where they will go join the demonstration outside. UN cops with Tintin hair cuts keep the protest moving. Their calmness stands in stark contrast to the raving blood thirsty insanity of the 8 foot tall Danish police who leer through the sliding glass doors of the conference center. (Ok I am a little bias) The conference attendees march towards a group of several thousand protesters who have managed to congregate north of the conference. But after a brief impromptu press conference they are beat back by Danish truncheons. 
The kids make it inside! Kind of.
The protest, organized by the Climate Justice Action umbrella organization is mostly made up off anti-globalization protestors. They believe the treaty as it stands is the ultimate victory of capitalism. The commidifiction of the entire world. In the dreamland of a successful Copenhagen treaty, every stray carbon will be tracked and sold. And if we are clever with math and technology Palin and I can still drive our SUVs. The rich will keep getting rich, and the poor will keep getting poorer. And the status quo can carry on.
The proclaimed goal of the protestors outside was to push their way into the conference center. They wanted a seat at the table with Obama, Brown, Burlisconi, Mugabe and the other 150 leaders attending the conference to push for a fundamental lifestyle change, a new world order in which money starts flowing north to south and people recognize the simple fact that the consequences of their actions are apocalyptic for their children.
However Things aren’t going so well outside. The once legal protest has been declared illegal and the cops are stealing the crowd’s truck and PA system. But not before a splinter group stealthily (and this is harder than you imagine when surrounded by thousands of cops and helicopters) blow up 20 air mattresses and sprint away from the police towards a bramble thicket along a moat surrounding the Bella center. Within minutes the center breached by a brave squad of Danes.
The only problem is that a lot of angry dogs and cops are waiting on their other side. And the dogs aren’t going for the dozens of hotdogs thrown by the protesters. “That’s the stupidest plan I have every seen” says one cop loudly in Danish, but nonetheless the dog handlers are careful to kick the bright red sausages back into the water. The kids on the end of the mattress bridge are not particularly excited to challenge the half dozen dogs and their nine foot tall owners. But the cops are coming behind us and time is tight.
Feeling the pressure a particularly brave/stupid protester in a furry Russian hat leaps to the raft and scrambles towards the cops. They welcome him with a powerful stream of pepper spray. Falling through the brambles like acid rain an entire bottle is spent on the furry hat kid. 
The cops laugh, but the kid startles them by leaping into the bramble bushes.
He made it to the inside!
The crowd cheers, and then hushes as five police wrap him a dozen ways around the bramble bush before throwing him into the mud and hauling him off to jail.
John Kerry arrives and the NGOs leave
Waving my now limp press card I escape the protest just as the police have them surrounded. I return to the warm embrace of the Bella center, I find the talks have stalled once again.
At his daily press conference Yvo de Boer, the forthright and eloquent executive secretary of the conference is looking tired. He’s mixing metaphors, and is increasingly exacerbated. When asked about the brutality of Danish police, he say’s he hasn’t left the conference center recently, but he is worried about all the protests inside the center. People are getting up on tables he says.
To make matters worse a squad of earnest youth supposedly representing a petition signed by million people just sat down and told Yvo they wouldn’t leave until a fair ambitious and binding treaty was signed. Then they preceded to start reading all the names of the people they were representing. As Yvo was talking they had probably only reached a couple hundred.
The stakes are high here at the most important-meeting-in-the-history-of-the-earth and the kids are pissed about the earth their parents are giving them, probably the worse earth ever.
“At the WTO, they have warships patrolling the conference center to keep out the NGOs” Yvo complained to the press, “this is an open process but I am begining to have my doubts.”
Tomorrow Yvo is hosting 150 dictators, presidents, prime ministers, and vice presidents and they don’t like kids getting in their face. So later that night he decides to ban NGOs from the last two days of negotiations.
Outside the snow falls thickly, and 8 foot tall Danish police patrol the perimeter with snarling police dogs.
As I leave, Senator Kerry is whisking through the building. He is in a deep conversation with an Asian delegate about why why America has single handedly decimated the possibility of an ambitious treaty. (Europe has pledged a 20 -30 percent decreased in 1990 emissions, the US might pledge a 4% reduction.)
“American’s just don’t like treaties” he said, “they are independent thinkers.” Earlier Thomas Friedman had tried to explain the same thing. “We don’t like treaties, and this one smells of Europeness” he told the European crowd. They laughed, but Friedman wasn’t telling a joke. After all this is the country that renamed French fries, freedom fries.
Nice work — it’s valuable to have this “inside/outside” perspective of what was going on there!
Another link in this chain is James Hansen, senior NASA climate scientist who says that the lack of an agreement at Copenhagen is good news — it leaves us with a blank slate to really talk about what needs to be done: to get serious, to tax carbon, to stop this cap-and-trade-bullshit.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/22/leading_climate_scientist_james_hansen_on