Day 1 at COP15 -”Let’s get it done.”

Sorry for not having a post yesterday, but the day was jam packed with events and booth preparation. O yes, the booth!

Well, for those who didn’t know, part of my International Environmental Policy course this semester was to as a class come up with an influential booth for the conference. Not many schools end up actually having a booth while here, so this was definitely something special. We worked all semester on creating a public opinion poll for people to answer at the conference! We call it POPCOP, the Public Opinion Poll of the Conference of Parties (Climate Change Conference). So far we have seen awesome responses from the public, with the number of votes increasing intensively every hour. It’s really exciting to see our hard work all semester finally pay off. We have gotten interviews about it from a European news service, pictures taken by a Swedish newspaper, and have made tons of contacts from all over the world. It has really been amazing.

In the morning, after a wild goose chase to find NGO tickets to the Plenary session (the main opening session where all countries meet together to welcome each other to the conference), we finally made it in. The sessions ran for almost 2.5 hours, but the speeches given were outstanding. The Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Denmark, Mr. Lars Løkke Rasmussen was the first to speak, welcoming all to the country and expressing how important the next two weeks are to our planet’s future.

“Global Warming knows no border,” he said. “It does not discriminate. It affects us all. And we are here today, because we are all committed to take action.”

The Prime Minister is right. This conference, though some believe nothing will come out of it, is going on because we are at such a critical point in our world’s cumulative life. It is something that is affecting everyone and if we fail to act NOW, that will mean catastrophic consequences for not one, not two, but every nation and every person. After the Mayor of Copenhagen, the Chair of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC all spoke, Mr. Maciej Nowicki, COP14 president passed the torch, so to speak, to Ms. Connie Hedegaard, the now COP 15 president. I am a sucker for a good speech and Hedegaard’s speech really went right to the core.

“In short: let’s get it done,” she said. “This is the time to deliver! This is the place to commit. And yes there are still many obstacles. But it is up to us to overcome them. And it is do-able.”

No objections coming from my point of view. The next two weeks our nations leading delegates are going to be in heated debates, taking their own country’s interests and needs into account, but what I hope all will come to find is that there is an underlying need for every nation to address climate change, not just talk about it, or talk in circles, but act. Let’s get it done delegates.