“Hopenhagen” becomes “Hopelesshagen”

Thousands of registered participants from NGO’s, Associations and Country Delegations who had prepared for this conference for months and spent untold amounts to arrive and stay in over-priced hotels and private accommodation were rudely surprised by the United Nations. I witnessed many thousands of delegates waiting in the freezing Copenhagen cold for days to get into the Climate Change Conference, to no avail.  I am not kidding; people who had travelled long distances would wait for hours every day and not get through to the registration booth as the UN registration system had crashed. To make matters worse, on Tuesday (Dec 15^th) this week the UN forced the few lucky participants that had managed to get their credentials, to go through a second registration process, which cut these numbers by another half.   All of this under the watchful eye of a huge Danish Riot police presence.  Even the transit system to the centre was shut down to prevent people from getting to the centre.

Yvo De Boer, UN Climate Chief, admitted that only 15,000 of the 45,000 registered participants were given entry passes, leaving 30,000 registered participants in the cold, literally.  He admitted that the UN misjudged how many people would actually show up, saying “you can’t fit a size 12 feet into size 6 shoes.” Even officials from The Climate Registry, Climate Action Reserve and a Canadian national delegation Member of Parliament were turned away.

The Main Conference at the Bella Centre turned into a side show, and seemed to be dominated by thousands of climate-tourists bent on disrupting the meetings.  All of this in the backdrop of a one hundred year old coal-fired electric facility that was belching out enough CO₂ to offset any benefits that might come from the fray. The UN completely misjudged the number of people who they invited and the Conference was not prepared.

Little wonder there is scant progress on a Climate Agreement when the UN organizers cannot even process the people it registered months in advance.

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