There are 100 photographs displayed on the edge of the public square where those nifty globes are that I showed you yesterday.  I have included a selection of these, and this is the caption on the marquee accompanying them:   

'100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear' is dedicated to creating awareness about the impact of climate change.  Based on reports from the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we have selected 100 places on Earth that are projected to undergo profound changes - or even disappear - in the next few generations.

 

The photo book of all 100 of the images is entitled "100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear" and will be available soon.    

This morning, after having breakfast with the team, I decided to attempt to become "registered" at the main venue for the conference, the Bella Center.  There are many locations throughout the city proper where there have been terrific meetings, events, displays, etc.  But the main location - where the heads of state will appear to proclaim their positions on climate issues and staff members roll up their sleeves and get to work - is considerably out of town.  The added dimension to this situation is the immense and intense police action which has been mustered to maintain order and protect the participants.  We can certainly imagine what the directors of the conference had in mind when they established the largest police action ever in Copenhagen.  Troops were called in from neighboring countries, especially Germany, to reinforce the local forces.  So the military is everywhere - on street corners, before hotel entrances, at the meeting places, hovering in helicopters - robust, stern, exceedingly fit young men and women, attentive and vigilant.  But also approachable for directions and advice as long as you sort of keep your distance and don't look like a protester.  And derivative of this rigorous control of everybody's activity is the (ridiculously) stringent process of being granted entrance to the main venue, the Bella Center.  You need a bar-coded, photo ID pendant around your neck which you have procured by going to the Bella Center with your passport and a letter stating that the organization you represent has requested of Mr. Yvo de Boer, the Secretary of the UNFCCC, that you be admitted.  Sounds all very straight-forward.  Except that the line you must stand in with your passport and your letter is five hours long.  Or maybe two hours, or perhaps six.  The average as over four, standing in line, outside, cold, no bath room.  I know several people who waited five hours, failed, and left.  It boggles the mind.  This has become a huge and disturbing problem.  The victims of the process are disparate - heads of organizations, their senior staff, under-secretaries, press people, and especially the not-for-profits, who after all have made this all happen.  

So I rode the bus out to the Bella Center, went to the gate for entering the line, was informed politely and crisply by a lady cop that the wait was five hours, got back on the bus, and went to meetings in city limits as I and most of the NRDC delegates have been doing.  

First, I had lunch with a group affiliated with the Aspen Institute working to restore the Arctic.  I sat across from an extraordinary older woman with whom I had conversed at dinner the night before.  I had heard her speak at the breakfast session I described yesterday, at the UN Population Forum.  She was very stern and very strident in stating her thoughts at the breakfast microphone about the disparity between rich and poor, that this was profoundly destructive to civil and sustainable society.  Then, during the conversations before dinner, I came up to her, told her I found her comments about the inequality of wealth very meaningful, but couldn't she be a bit more assertive and certain in her presentation - I was making a silly, friendly joke.  She smiled and we chatted on a bit.  

Then, there she was sitting across from me in a small and special luncheon of 10 people who appeared to be very formidable in their attempt to save the Arctic from the injuries of warming water and disappearing ice.  This woman has a very heavy accent with her otherwise excellent English, and her name was difficult for me.  I now know it to be Gro Harlem Bundtland.  So I graciously asked her to repeat her name, whereupon she looked at me curiously and directly and asked "You really don't know who I am?"  Not imperious or offended, just matter-of-fact as if every body else knew who she was.  Then of course I found who she was and this is that in descending order of significance: Prime Minister of Norway (formerly, for eight years), Head of the World Health Organization (currently), originator of what has become known as the Bundtland Commission (the very first to articulate the tenets of sustainable economy),  Minister of the Environment for Norway (before being Prime Minister), member of the Aspen Institute Committee to protect the Arctic (currently, along with Prince Ranier of Monaco), on the faculty at the Harvard School of Public Health, and probably more which I can't remember.  After I removed my partially chewed foot from my mouth, we moved on.  She was very flattered that I had not known who she was and that therefore I had apparently dealt with her honestly in embracing her thoughts on monetary inequality.  I guess ineptitude has its benefits.

After lunch there was a press conference above the restaurant to which the Prince showed up.  It was held on the top floor of the large old warehouse and was swarming with young Danish scientists displaying studies and reports of their work all over the Arctic.  They showed me sub-ice sediment cores, microscope views of various minute crustaceans which appear and recede in relation to climactic changes, and computer animations of ocean surface currents, atmospheric circulation, and sea level changes with melting glaciers and floating ice masses.  I loaded up with booklets, charts and maps, which I am eager to read to deepen my understanding of the science of global climate change.  

Dinner from 7:30 to 10:30  was hosted by the World Watch Institute and was about India. 

The NRDC is poised to open an office in India after months of study by Jacob Scherr, the senior staffer for our International work, and four wonderfully talented young Indian woman who just happen to be on the staff.  We have also received a commitment of significant funds to support a preliminary evaluation, and then on-going support if it all looks doable - which it will.  India is the fourth largest contributor to green house gases, behind China, the US, and Indonesia.  It is a democracy with extraordinarily excellent technical awareness and educational, but profoundly un-developed.  50% of Indians do not have electricity.  So why should they have to contribute resources to resolve global climate change?  The Indians are extremely conservative, very protective of their ways, and generally dismissive of any outside advice or direction.  German environmental groups have taken a deep interest in India and were very much represented at the meeting.

World Watch Institute is the pre-eminent data bank for a variety of socio-economic information.  Their usefulness to India will be to very precisely identify their current state of economy, efficiency, productivity, and technology in order that improvements can be made.   More later.