Climate Justice in Copenhagen

Bruce Bawer is covering the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen. Here's how he begins today's report:

Well, here I am at the Vatican in Rome, where thousands of pilgrims from every corner of the earth crowd St. Peter’s Square, their eyes trained on the glorious basilica within which the College of Cardinals is gathering in secret conclave to settle the all-important question: Who will stand in the shoes of the fisherman?

Oops, sorry, I got a little confused there for a second. In fact I’ve just arrived in Copenhagen. But you’ll have to excuse my mistake, because it’s already clear that being here during the next few days is going to be very much like attending some kind of massive religious gathering.

Later in the piece, Bawer admits that "doesn’t feel so much like the Vatican as it does, say, Havana or Pyongyang."

Stroll around awhile and you’ll keep encountering giant banners or posters or displays designed to ensure that the great unwashed don’t lose sight of the orthodoxy to which they’re expected to pay mindless obeisance. On the side of one church, for example, a banner three stories high proclaims that it’s “TIME FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE.” There are also endless outsized placards — inspired, I suspect, by Barack Obama’s campaign rhetoric – bearing the unfortunate coinage “HOPENHAGEN.” Barfsville. I don’t remember where, if anyplace, I’ve ever seen so many huge, fancy banners. Not to mention the big, splashy, World’s Fair-style displays — among them a giant globe in City Hall Park — which certainly must be using up plenty of electricity. Wasting resources is OK, it seems, when you’re engaged in a noble struggle against wasting resources.

That last line gets at an ironic feature of the summit is that the summit has an astoundingly enormous carbon footprint--larger than all of Morocco in 2006, and presumably larger even than Al Gore's home. One London columnist notes that the summit-goers are expected to use 140 private jets and 1,200 limousines (only five of which are hybrids, due in part to Denmark's high taxes on such vehicles).

Actually the wastefulness of the summit would be ironic, except that it seems to be par for the course for global environmentalists.