Even as negotiations in Copenhagen go down to the wire, the thoughts of many people seem to be turning to the psychology of what is sometimes called climate denial. BBC blogger Richard Black notes that virtually all the deniers are male, a pattern that ultimately leaves him stumped. Over at the admirable Skeptic North, John Abrams – a former denier himself – argues that “people do not accept global warming because it would negatively impact their desire to consume” and that many libertarian types are especially resistant because they find economic regulation unpalatable. Faced with arguments that imply the need for bureaucratic impositions like carbon pricing, they glower and insist there’s no problem to solve.

The article that really caught my eye, though, was by the ever-provocative George Monbiot. His analysis perhaps started from a perspective similar to Abrams’, but ended up going much further. As Monbiot sees it, denial is the consequence of primal impulses that are out of place in the modern world:

The meeting at Copenhagen confronts us with our primal tragedy. We are the universal ape, equipped with the ingenuity and aggression to bring down prey much larger than itself, break into new lands, roar its defiance of natural constraints. Now we find ourselves hedged in by the consequences of our nature, living meekly on this crowded planet for fear of provoking or damaging others. We have the hearts of lions and live the lives of clerks.

I suppose there’s something to this. Canada and other nations can no longer spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere without even imagining destructive consequences. In that sense, we are indeed hedged in. Canadians perhaps feel this hedging more acutely than most, considering that we are so unhedged in other respects. After all, we have abundant resources and a population density of less than four souls per square kilometre. On the face of things, we should have every opportunity for demographic and economic growth, but it may be difficult or even impossible to realise much of this growth while also cutting back on our greenhouse emissions. I suppose Monbiot would say that voluntarily restraining ourselves from breeding like rabbits and founding great new cities upon the newly unfrozen tundra is a form of living meekly.

However, Monbiot also seems to think that a revolutionary new need for meekness now applies across the board. As he puts it:

The vicious battles we have seen so far between greens and climate change deniers, road safety campaigners and speed freaks, real grassroots groups and corporate-sponsored astroturfers are just the beginning. This war will become much uglier as people kick against the limits that decency demands.

What makes Monbiot’s piece especially interesting is that he actually sympathises with the impulse to kick against limits. “I lead a mostly peaceful life,” he says in a wonderful line, “but my dreams are haunted by giant aurochs.” How often do aurochs – huge extinct relatives of domestic cattle that feature in cave paintings, although they survived into the 17^th century – make it into the opinion pages?

I would contend that the idea of Copenhagen as a great watershed between an age of heroism and an age of meekness is flawed in two respects. First, our ancestors were hardly as unconstrained as Monbiot seems to imagine. People have always been “hedged in” by ritual taboos, by social and political relationships, and indeed by customs intended to conserve natural resources.

Second, and more importantly, the need to accept some constraints on our greenhouse emissions hardly implies that Canada must enter an Age of Constraint affecting every aspect of society. It’s a bit odd that Monbiot mentions road safety campaigners in the same breath as “greens” trying to get the world to tackle climate change. Health and safety is a logically independent question, as are respect for religion, political correctness, animal welfare, the silly emergent issue of robot welfare, and all of the other standard justifications for setting fresh limits on our behaviour (often, ironically, in the name of some form of “rights”).

Like the aurochs hunters of ancient Europe, 21^st century Canadians need to discriminate between genuine dangers and harmless shadows, between storms on the horizon and tempests in teapots. Personally, I’m willing to accept that climate change is a problem that will require us to make some difficult changes, though admittedly I’m less sure about the vast financial transfers being discussed in Copenhagen. In many other areas, however, I think we should not only kick against the limits but kick them aside and live more freely, boldly, and unflinchingly. Let’s not hang up our aurochs spears just yet – the aurochs themselves are extinct, but there are still plenty of sacred cows to kill and butcher.

My friends Matt and Ashley over at Halton Does Copenhagen have been very busy this week interviewing delegates and attendees, touring a Danish offshore wind farm, and even getting up close and personal with Senator John Kerry:

They also have footage of Kerry’s speech at the conference, which is well worth watching in full.

Sadly, in the course of their extraordinary efforts to show us inside the Copenhagen Conference, Matt and Ashley seem to have attracted a couple of trolls. Welcome to the blogosphere, kids!

If you feel so inclined, I’m sure they’d appreciate a few more productive comments and/or words of encouragement.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Shauna’s last post from Copenhagen. Thank you for your thoughtful and interesting feedback during this process.

Thumbs down Canada: one of the advertisements placed in the Copenhagen International Airport by a global coalition including tcktcktck.org and Greenpeace.

It’s the end of my stay in Copenhagen. I woke up early this morning, packed away all of the literature I collected from the Bright Green trade show, and headed off to the airport. My taxi driver asked me what I thought about all of “this klima talk.” “Did you know they are spending $28 million dollars a day for this – and for what I ask you – nothing – that’s what”, he scoffed.

On the way to the airport we stopped by Christiania, the large community that was set up by squatters on the outskirts of town. It has been the host to a number of Copenhagen climate change events led by artists and musicians. It’s an intriguing development that stretches several city blocks. The taxi driver loves Christiania. He tells me that Snoop Dog visited it last year and proclaimed that it was heaven on earth. I’m not so sure, but I’m impressed with the community they have created among the old dilapidated buildings. It’s a nice contrast to the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

I juxtapose Christiania with the Bella Centre and the sterile environment that surrounds most international negotiations. For anyone who has spent time in the bowels of the United Nations building, you can understand why creative thinking does not flourish in such dark and dismal spaces. Perhaps if our negotiators could just get out of these tombs, they might see the light. Instead they are burrowed away in their negotiating rooms, sustained with bad coffee and sandwiches and forced to negotiate into the early hours of the morning.

Alas, if I could only blame their limited vision on their working conditions but I know better. As I arrived home and crawled into bed last night, I was pleased to see that the lead story on the National was COP 15 related. Terry Milewski was reporting on the leaked documents outlining Canada’s new targets for green house gas emissions. If our strategy in Copenhagen wasn’t bad enough, now Canada is actually suggesting a dramatic weakening of our emission targets.

The reason for this weakening is to harmonize the Canadian oil companies with the weakest elements of a proposed bill in the United States that would protect energy intensive and trade exposed industries. Herein lies the difficulty for Canada when President Obama arrives in Copenhagen. Canada has decided not to negotiate with other nations in Copenhagen in good faith. Instead, our Prime Minister and Minister of the Environment have chosen to align themselves with the most conservative forces in the US.

The Obama administration is trying to carve out a greener, more progressive policy for the US at COP 15, but they will not be looking to Canada for support in this. Harper and Prentice have staked out their territory and unfortunately they have stood in line with the Republicans (intentionally or not) who are in Copenhagen to thwart the President’s initiative.

As I look back on this week, I can’t help but wonder how Canada could have fallen so far and so quickly from grace in the eyes of the global community. Is it our government’s inexperience in international negotiations that has brought us to this unenviable position? Or is it that they cannot see the larger picture because of their close bond with the oil and gas industry? Where are the voices of the other businesses in this country that stand to gain enormously from shifting to a greener, low carbon economy?

I think it is going to take a miracle to get a good deal out of Copenhagen. And if it is one thing I’ve learned in this last week, it’s that the negotiators are immune to the pleas of citizens. So, if citizens don’t matter, perhaps the engines of our economy should speak louder. Perhaps it’s time for other businesses to get vocal. If Coca-cola, Microsoft, Lafarge, and Unilever can call for a price on carbon in Copenhagen, perhaps it’s time that RIM, SNC Lavalin, Bell, MEC and other Canadian countries flexed their muscle.

Syncrude Mildred Lake plant, from Wikimedia Commons

In amongst the stories of pessimism, pranks, and angry mobs of frost-bitten delegates, there was a little ray of hope in the news from Copenhagen today.

An agreement has very nearly been reached on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), a mechanism by which developing nations would be compensated with cash or carbon credits for preserving their carbon-storing forests. The idea is to make the world’s forests worth more alive than dead, thus giving developing nations a strong financial incentive to favour forest preservation over mining, grazing, or other less carbon-friendly land uses.

Think of it as the carrot side of the carrot-and-stick approach to carbon pricing.

One criticism of the agreement is that it is somewhat limited in scope. REDD began life as an agenda item at the 2005 Montreal Conference that specifically referred to developing countries, and even now the agreement is aimed almost entirely at preserving tropical forests in poorer nations, although word is that peatlands are now to be included as well.

This expansion has caused some to argue for the inclusion of other natural carbon sinks, particularly the boreal forests. Boreal systems are unique in that the comprise both forest and peatland, and thus store twice as much carbon per hectare as tropical rainforests.

While the current agreement only applies to developing nations, if expended this approach to carbon pricing could eventually have profound implications for Alberta’s tar sands, which sit right in the heart of Canada’s immense boreal region.

By placing a dollar value on the forests and peatlands being destroyed to get at the bitumen below, the Canadian government – or even just that of Alberta – would have a strong incentive to restrict tar sands development. And instead of forever cutting deals for the oil companies, they would be compelled to recoup the lost credit for forest preservation directly from them, making the already costly extraction process that much more expensive and therefore less appealing.

Combined with other forms of carbon pricing tied to more obvious emissions, the environmental costs of tar sands operations under such a regime would become apparent in terms that even our government should be able to understand.

Copenhagen - young Canadians from the Indigenous Environmental Network, Rainforest Action Network and the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition staged a "rally and walk-through protest" this Friday.

In light of recently leaked documents and a Yes Men prank yesterday revealing that the Canadian government does NOT intend to meet its weak climate goal of reducing carbon emissions or negotiate any new goals at the Copenhagen COP15 talks, as many had previously hoped – and in light of international anger towards Canadians as a people for “supporting” this action (based on often flawed and statistically insignificant polls) – I felt that it was time to share some amazing photos I’ve seen in the past week of a movement that’s currently happening across Canada.

This movement, based on national anger towards an administration that many of us did not vote for, that we do not believe in, and that does not represent our values as a nation or as young people, has exploded across the country. Citizens from coast to coast are asking Canada to set concrete goals to fight climate change, in every major city and in small towns I hadn’t even heard of.

Instead of choosing to give up and withdraw from it all, these people are standing up (often in freezing temperatures) for what they think is important. They reveal that our country is not united, as is being claimed in the international press, and that Canadians from coast to coast do not support our administration’s lack of commitment towards climate change. I hope these remarkable photos, viewed together, will inspire you as much as they have inspired me as a young Canadian.

CLICK FOR MANY MORE PHOTOS…

Vancouver, BC - Over 250 people of all ages gather at the Vancouver Art Gallery in a "spontaneous combustion" as a part of the global 'World Wants a Real Deal on Climate Change' candlelight vigils.

Toronto, Canada - Community members from all backgrounds rally together against climate change.

Montreal, QC - Citizens gathered downtown to show their engagement toward our planet and to ask for a real climate deal in Copenhagen.

Parliament Hill, Ottawa - Climate change demonstration on October 24, 2009 as a part of the International Day of Climate Action. Thousands came out despite the (incorrect) forecast of downpours.

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - Young students protest the government's national climate policies. "We formed a human hourglass to demonstrate that time is running out."

Whitehorse, Yukon - International Day of Climate Action, outside of the legislature.

Victoria, BC - Passionate rally on Dec 12th against the lack of COP15 climate change commitments.

Trois-Rivières, Québec - "La soirée fut un agréable moment de partage par laquelle les gens de Trois-Rivières ont porté leur voix vers Copenhague et signaler leur position plus engagée que celle de leur gouvernement Harper."

Smiths Falls, Ontario. "It's clear that We -- from the REAL Deal Reuse Store and Environment Centre -- Want a Real Deal on Climate Change."

Students protest in Niagra on the Lake, Canada. "Event was canceled because it was so cold, so we decided our environmental Biology class was better."

Halifax, NS. "Around 150 people gathered in this church to protest the government's policies for a powerful candlelit vigil and interfaith service, in spite of temperatures approaching -20 c with the windchill."

Banff, Canada - a loan couple stand vigil in the Rockie Mountains with a "clear message for Copenhagen negotiators."

this post has also been xposted to young viewers on VELOCITY.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Shauna’s sixth post from Copenhagen’s COP15 climate talks.

Canadians gather in Nelson, BC at a candle-light vigil for the "World Wants a Real Deal" campaign to show disappointment and "embarrassment" at their government's stance on climate change.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
– Hamlet, Act I scene iv

Kronenberg Castle, the backdrop of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, was the stage of “To be, or not to be?” — a gathering of green businesses. The castle is a 45 minutes train ride along the coast line north of Copenhagen and I traveled there with a correspondent for Australian Associated Press and a member of the St. Kits and Nevis delegation.

Between the calls to the AAP desk to file stories to make the news cycle 14 time zones away, the conversation flowed between the details of the negotiations and the various protests and parallel events across the city. “What is going on with Canada?” the foreign correspondent wanted to know. “I had no idea your country was so bad at meeting and setting climate change targets.” “Yes,” my seat mate chimed in – “you’ve been leading the parties for fossil awards this week”.

Canada has become the stench that has settled in the state of Denmark. But with the arrival of a delegation of US Republican Senators , Canada will have allies – perhaps not allies we might choose, but allies nonetheless. Their cause will be to stop President Obama from making any commitments to reach an agreement in Copenhagen and in doing so, they will be serving the Canadian negotiation strategy as well.

“Do Canadians support your government’s position?” the journalist wanted to know. I shake my head in response, “ I don’t think most Canadians have a clue of what our negotiating team is saying here”. After a brief discussion on the lack of an effective opposition in Canada and the green turn in Australia’s foreign policy, we turn our attention to the role of business in the climate change negotiations.

Tonight is my third business gathering in 24 hours. In all three gatherings the message has been the same: price carbon, raise significant funding to assist developing countries to adapt to climate change, build trust with consumers, shift government policy to support a low-carbon economy and educate the population about the issues. Perhaps the only difference with the gathering at Kronenberg castle is that The Crown Prince Frederik and Gro Harlem Brundtland were present – both royalty in their own right.

Gro Brundtland, the former Prime Minister of Norway and the lead author of Our Common Future, the document that introduced sustainable development to the international community, set high expectations for the negotiators at COP 15. “I expect them to agree on much more here than extending a deadline”, she said. She urged the parties to leave Copenhagen with a fair and globally binding agreement to address climate change and reduce green house gas emissions. “We don’t just want any deal – we need a good deal” she said.

Bruntland’s urgings echoed the calls of over 50,000 citizens who gathered on the steps of Denmark’s Parliament earlier in the day. They were joined by over 3,000 actions around the world calling for a real deal in Copenhagen. And while an extreme group of activists used the gathering to violently protest capitalism, causing the arrests of 700, the overwhelming majority of people who suffered the cold to march to Bella Centre attended the rally to deliver a peaceful but clear message of urgency, concern and hope for a deal.

But it isn’t likely that COP 15 is going to deliver a deal – despite the pleas of island countries who are literally sinking with raising sea levels, poorer countries who are already experiencing the dire impacts of shifts in climate patterns, growing seasons and water availability, northern people whose lives are shifting with the melting ice, or business leaders who see the economic opportunities that will emerge in a low-carbon economy. Instead our negotiators prefer to keep their heads buried in the sands – the oil sands that is – and why not. If it keeps the oil industry in Alberta happy, isn’t that all that matters?

Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), Prussian officer and military theorist.

One of the more interesting books I read this year was an abridged version of On War, the early 19^th century classic by the Prussian officer and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. On War is probably best known these days for the assertion that “war is a mere continuation of policy by other means”, as the wording goes in my edition. I’m aware that this strikes some people as ruthless cynicism, but von Clausewitz was actually making a simple empirical point. War is a term for what happens when a state (or a non-state actor, like a rebel movement) resorts to massive force in order to achieve a policy objective, such as securing control over resources or deposing a particular head of government, and someone else decides to resist. The nature of the policy objective determines the scope of the war, at least initially, and the conditions that define victory for each side.

I found myself thinking about On War as I read about US President Barack Obama’s decision to send a “surge” of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan. Speculation in advance of the announcement focused on the number of men and women to be deployed, but von Clausewitz would presumably have said that the more important question was what exactly they were supposed to do. What American policy, in other words, is now being continued by means of the deployment of 30,000 soldiers?

Von Clausewitz, who wrote about war with a dispassionate, almost chilling clarity, would probably not have been satisfied with the answers to this central question that Obama offered in his speech announcing the surge. However, Obama did say:

Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.

To meet that goal, we will pursue the following objectives within Afghanistan. We must deny al-Qaeda a safe haven. We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government, so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan’s future.

This sounds generally realistic, and laudably modest. To “disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan” may be a bit of a stretch, although at least Obama didn’t threaten to depilate, disembowel and defenestrate them while he was at it. However, reversing the Taliban’s momentum is more achievable than bringing about the Taliban’s total doom, destruction and devastation. And strengthening the capacity of the Afghan government is similarly more achievable than turning it into a model liberal democracy, or even making it decent, disciplined and decorous.

A fascinating account of the decision-making process in the White House describes a shift in thinking that apparently took place in October:

Said a senior White House adviser who took extensive notes of the meeting: “The big moment when the mission became a narrower one was when we realized we’re not going to kill every last member of the Taliban.”

This would be more impressive if Canadian politicians hadn’t been publicly making this same point months earlier (and astute commentators years earlier, but that’s another matter). At the beginning of March, the CBC reported that Stephen Harper had declared, on American television for crying out loud, that the insurgency in Afghanistan could not be completely defeated. If this came as a revelation to Obama’s team in October, one can only suggest that they should have been paying more attention to what their counterparts on Her Majesty’s side of the border were saying.

In general, it’s surprising how closely America’s plans in Afghanistan have come to mirror our own. The basic idea of working temporarily to weaken the insurgency and strengthen Afghan society and governance, and then leaving in 2011, is straight out of Canada’s playbook.

Questions remain, of course. Gwynne Dyer, whose analysis of the surge plan is predictably worth reading, thinks that talk of al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan is overblown and that Obama is really just hoping for a “decent interval” between the withdrawal of American troops and the moment when the Taliban take over. However, even Dyer concedes that the Taliban “would still have to overcome all the other ethnic forces in the country”. One important force, though not precisely an ethnic one, is a grouping of Tajik leaders along with a token Pashtun (Hamid Karzai) and at least one battle-hardened Uzbek (Abdul Rashid Dostum), otherwise known as the Afghan government. For the next year and a half, our job – and America’s, and the rest of NATO’s – will be to hold off the Taliban and help this motley crew of Afghan warlords and oligarchs build up the military strength and civil authority that will be needed to stand alone when the time comes.

(I’m going to impose on my hosts here a bit and post an item from my two young friends Ashley Bigda and Matt Juniper, who are in Copenhagen this week as Liberal Youth delegates. I may be posting more highlights as the week progresses, but you can follow all their adventures at their blog: Halton Does Copenhagen.)
________________________________

While we wait for the mess to get sorted out at the Bella Centre, we wanted to talk about something a little more inspirational. Our former Prime Minister Paul Martin took some much appreciated time out of his schedule to sit down with the Young Liberals and Canada (and a few of our foreign colleagues) to discuss issues related to climate change.

Mr.Martin is an extremely intelligent and well-spoken individual and it was a treat to get time to talk with him in a more intimate environment. Mr.Martin had just returned from discussions with environmental ministers of the Congo-basin African countries regarding climate change. These are countries with both enormous resources and enormous poverty. An interseting point: Mr. Martin believes that if given a choice between the resources of the Congo and the resources of Canada – one would choose the Congo, yet there is an enormous gap between the two countries economically.

There is tremendous opportunity to benefit from these resources in more ways than simple deforestation. Currently however, without a carbon market these trees are worth more dead than alive. Charcoal, wood, etc. are the primary resources these trees are currently used for through ’slash and burn’ methods. A carbon market can actually create opportunity both for developed and developing nations – credits purchased from developing nations give value to these forested areas. Carbon sequestration is just one of the many benefits a preserved and sustainability forest can bring to the Congo-basin.

Mr. Martin’s discussion helped put this climate issue into perspective – that it is a truly global issue. The fact remains that climate change is a issue created by the developed world that is currently affecting the developing world in a disproportionate way. We recently travelled to Tanzania, Africa and witnessed first hand the fear that the melting of the polar ice caps on Mount Kilimanjaro is causing over fresh water reserves. The people understand the importance of conserving their resources and are not oblivious to their changing environments that threaten their livelihood. However, the solution must be global – an already poverty stricken region can not do this without contributions from all who are benefiting from their resources. Africa’s forests provide value not just to the local people but to the rest of the world, which is something we do not recognize and is something the locals are unable to take advantage of at this point.

We keep on hammering away at our key point: that this agreement needs to be global. Not just focused on the developed nations.

US President Barack Obama breezed into Oslo with typical high-handed insouciance to pick up his undeserved Nobel Prize. He arrived with a huge, disruptive security presence and insisted that his tight schedule would not allow him to stick around for the second day of festivities, including lunch with King Harald, that would normally attend a Peace Prize. Unaccountably, the Norwegians gave him the prize anyway instead of sending him packing with proper Viking brusqueness, although they may have regretted their decision when they sat down to listen to his acceptance speech. Choice passages from the first three paragraphs:

I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility.

Ah. Great humility. That explains why you blew off lunch with His Majesty, then.

And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.

He has his problems, our Barack, but self-confidence is not among them.

Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize… my accomplishments are slight.

Indeed.

However, it did get much better. Obama outlined a thoughtful view of how nations could work to maintain peace in a world where human beings, quite frankly, have much to fight about. He sensibly acknowledged that wars were sometimes necessary, and described what he considered to be two legitimate justifications for the use of force. First, simple self-defence:

I — like any head of state — reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation.

Second, something very like the (in)famous “responsibility to protect”:

I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later.

Obama went on to affirm the importance of international law and multilateralism, even nodding briefly towards Canadian peacekeeping when he mentioned “those who return home from peacekeeping and training abroad to Oslo and Rome; to Ottawa and Sydney; to Dhaka and Kigali”. He talked about the need for robust sanctions against states that try to acquire nuclear weapons and against “those who violate international law by brutalizing their own people”. He promised to work with Russia towards nuclear disarmament.

It added up, if we ignore the pomposity at the beginning and a certain amount of platitudinous sermonising at the end, to a substantive vision of a multilateral world governed by agreed rules of conduct. The “international community”, in this world, would stand ready to use force to control the behaviour of states that behaved aggressively either within or beyond their borders. One interesting thing about this vision was how Canadian it sounded, or rather how much like the thrust of Canadian foreign policy in the idealistic final years of the 20^th century. Those were the days when we loved the International Criminal Court, hated land mines, and let our humanitarian instincts lead our forces into missions of varying success in Somalia, Rwanda and the Balkans. If our prime minister were still named Jean Chretien, Canada would no doubt be rushing to declare support for the ideas that Obama articulated in Oslo.

Stephen Harper may be more skeptical, which suits me just fine. Inaction doesn’t actually tear at my conscience when I read about soldiers using pro-democracy demonstrators for target practice in Guinea, for example. I don’t exactly feel indifferent, but I also don’t feel responsible for helping – any more than I would expect the Guineans to feel responsible if something similar happened in Canada. The idea that they might just seems odd, and frankly a bit intrusive.

I’m not sure how much things like that really tear at Obama’s conscience either. He barely mentioned Afghanistan in his speech, but when he did it was purely with reference to defence against terrorism. It would have been easy to work in a sentence about promoting democracy, prosperity or human rights in Afghanistan, but he simply didn’t bother. This omission dovetails perfectly with Obama’s recent speech at West Point, when he justified his “surge” of 30,000 troops by invoking “the security of the United States and the safety of the American people”. When push comes to shove, it seems, national security still rules the American roost. Let Obama’s humanitarian rhetoric foster no illusions.

I guess this brings me to the surge itself, and its implications for Canadian forces in Afghanistan. Thoughts coming soon.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Shauna’s fifth post from Copenhagen’s COP15 climate talks.

The Hopenhagen globe in real life. CC licensed photo courtesy Matthew McDermott.

It’s late and I’ve just walked through the Hopenhagen exhibit with its giant globe suspended above the square in front of city hall. I had to cross through a fairly thick police line to get to the square. The police were strategically placed to protect the World Business Day forum which I was attending at the Danish Federation of Industry building. The police were called in after rumours started circulating that the Climate Justice Coalition was going to try to shut down the meeting. I am not entirely clear why they wanted to shut this meeting down, but as I sat down for lunch and looked out at the wall of police, I realized that this is first time I’ve found myself on the securitized side of a police line.

I’ve organized a number of conferences in my life and facilitated many others and I was pleasantly surprised by what I experienced today. It wasn’t the stream of heavy-hitting CEO’s who spoke to the urgency of climate change (no surprise that the CEOs from the oil patch were absent), nor was it the lunch or glog that followed the closing which impressed me. Instead, it was the design, format and facilitation of the conference.

The session was moderated by BBC World News anchor Nik Gowing. Nik is a talented old-style journalist who keenly listens to others, draws links, asks good questions and projects an energy that is contagious. I don’t think there was a person in the room who didn’t feel invited to participate. While Nik was speaking, a team of graphic facilitators were artistically capturing the discussions.

I attended the breakout session that was focused on strategies to address carbon consumption. It was led by Malina Mehra, Founder and CEO of the India based Centre for Social Markets that has pioneered work on corporate citizenship, climate change and sustainability. Mehra is a confident, competent and eloquent female leader who herded diverse companies through an intensely participatory and solutions oriented dialogue.

I’ve described the format and facilitators because I think that those of us working in the NGO-civil society sector believe we have a monopoly on innovative and creative public gatherings. We tend to cast dispersions on the business sector, characterizing them as conservative and self-serving. Yet, having attended both the Klimaforum and the World Business Day, I’d say the innovations in participatory processes, the new ideas and the out-of-the box thinking about workable solutions were coming from the business forum, not the People’s Summit.

My experiences of the Klimaforum on the other hand, reminded me of the time I participated in a sit-in at my university in the 1980s. The international socialists infiltrated our ranks and forced a group of well-intentioned, naive and overtired students into an autocratic style of “patient organizing” – creating an environment of political correctness that stifled any independent or innovative thinking.

I don’t want to suggest that the People’s Summit isn’t valuable – it is. It provides an important venue for groups struggling with the impacts of climate change to meet, network and trade strategies for coping. But the declaration that is likely to emerge from this gathering will read more like a tribute to Marx than a clear and insightful prescription for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

But I digress… back to the World Business Day.

One of the surprising outcomes of the session was the fairly strong and consistent call by businesses to price carbon. It was hard to find a businessman (I say businessman because women were few and far between) in the room who didn’t want to see a price on carbon. I found this surprising, particularly since CEOs from Coca-Cola, Unilever, and Lafarge were among the participants. I also had to do a double take when business leaders called for the need for significant financing for countries in the Global South to mitigate and adapt to climate change. These calls didn’t just come from businesses with headquarters in developing or emerging markets, they came largely from western industrialized countries. What made their comments particularly welcome is that they recognized their responsibility in raising some of this financing.

Perhaps one of the most interesting developments was announced in the last five minutes of the Forum. The CEOs of Coca-Cola and Unilever launched a new initiative with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development called” Creating a Low Carbon Value Chain” for retailer and producers of consumer goods. Their hope is to promote a series of best practices in reducing carbon in the total value chain. With these powerful companies turning their attention to create real reductions in their carbon footprint, it drives consumer demand for cleaner products and creates an enabling environment for other smaller companies, like Mountain Equipment Cooperative (where I serve as a Treasurer) to apply pressure on suppliers to adopt cleaner industrial practices. Let’s hope it is a serious undertaking, rather than a one-off initiative that was conceived to score points at a business gathering in Copenhagen. Judging from the tone of their presentations, I tend to think it is the former.