Celebrities, activists descend on Copenhagen
NGOs find innovative ways to spread the message
— Photo: AFP
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger talks to the media as he leaves his hotel in Copenhagen on Tuesday for a press conference at the United Nations Climate Change Conference at the Bella Centre.
Copenhagen: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Gore, Wangari Maathai, Desmond Tutu and a host of other celebrities descended here on Tuesday for the climate summit, rubbing shoulders with NGOs dressed as angels, penguins and trees.
As television crews chased celebrities around the sprawling summit venue — the Bella Centre — and scrums broke out to enter the rooms where they were speaking, the relatively few NGO representatives allowed inside found innovative ways of spreading their message to halt global warming.
Danish NGO members dressed as angels, complete with wings, sang new versions of Christmas carols, the lyrics reflecting the hope that the 11,500 government representatives gathered here would do much more to save the world from climate change.
Right next to them, two activists dressed up as trees to draw attention to deforestation, which is leading to climate change.
As the angels moved forward, a Japanese choir took their place. The lead singer was dressed as a penguin to show how animals were at risk due to climate change. Others held up placards explaining the lyrics in English.
This was a miniscule fraction of the over 22,000 NGO representatives gathered in the Danish capital for the December 7-18 summit. Most of them spent the day out in the cold in a vain attempt to get inside Bella Centre.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which organises the annual summit, had already announced it would let in only 7,000 of the NGO representatives on Tuesday and Wednesday, as Bella Centre was already well above its 15,000 capacity.
The effort to be among the 7,000 led to queues that stretched well beyond the closest Metro station. Some people had spent up to 11 hours in the cold on Monday before they could get in to register. Tuesday was no different. — IANS
