wordless wednesday - cop15 edition

all dressed up....

the reports of the nearly 1000 protestors detained yesterday here in copenhagen continue to be conflicting and sketchy. most of the accounts i've read (nytimes, bbc, the guardian, seattle times) cover the arrests in a cursory manner and then move on to the larger picture of the potential agreement that's on the horizon at the end of the COP15 meetings. and i think that i'm heartened by that, because it means that the focus is indeed on the bigger picture, which is the future of our planet and not whether some people wearing cow costumes were arrested for covering their faces (which apparently isn't how we wish to conduct ourselves within danish society). apparently all but 4-5 people were actually released without charges, so i think that the whole thing was a show of strength by a danish police force that has done a lot of preparing and hasn't really had anywhere to channel all that energy as of yet.

i mean, it must be rather disappointing if you've made all those preparations for violence and the majority of the messages coming from all of those gathering in copenhagen are ones of hope and peace and mutual caring for our planet. oh, and solutions.

bicycles that save up energy for when you need it.

a model city of the future that is jakarta (which i'll admit i found rather counter-intuitive).

shopping bags with a positive message.

a room for silent meditation.

and even france being ready to do something other than go on strike.

even brad pitt wants to save the earth.

no wonder the police were feeling frustrated and like they wished something would just happen.

and the plot thickens

apparently several thousand people demonstrated in copenhagen today.

968 were arrested and taken to the temporary holding facility in the old brewery.

and our local national news can't explain a single thing about it.

so much for free speech.
and hopenhagen.

raw lunch and artistic globes

yesterday, i spent the day wandering around copenhagen with miss buckle, who is in town, attending events surrounding the COP 15 UN meeting on climate change that's happening in copenhagen right now. copenhagen is full of people speaking other languages and even the danes (which are few, since all of the people in shops and restaurants are swedes these days) in all of the shops in copenhagen seem to have forgotten to speak danish.

in the interest of kindness to the environment (and of course being healthy), we started off our wander with lunch (as one does) at a new raw food restaurant in the heart of copenhagen. it's called 42°RAW. i'd been wanting to try a raw restaurant since buying charlie trotter's raw "cook"book several years ago, but could never convince anyone to go to one with me. to my knowledge, there wasn't a raw restaurant in copenhagen before this one opened anyway. we really enjoyed the food. i had a brilliant salad with beets, seaweed and a horseradish dressing and miss buckle's pumpkin salad was loaded with pumpkin seeds and salty olives (we did wonder how raw they were, but we were cool with being eased into the concept). and the pumpkin on her salad was just a gorgeous, vibrant orange. we ordered fresh juices to go with our salads - mine was carrot, apple and ginger and hers was beet apple and ginger and they were just great. the restaurant also serves coffee (not that raw, i think), but we waited to get coffees later. we really loved the experience and i will definitely be dragging husband back there to show him that the occasional raw meal can be a good thing. after our tummies were filled, we began to wander in search of interesting people and things.

some of my favorites were these art globes displayed around kongs nytorv.

this one was my favorite.

i'm a sucker for colors, what can i say?

i liked how graffiti-style writing was used on this one.

this one highlighted the butterflies.

check out the police and uniformed military in the background.

this one advocated wearing a sweater rather than turning up the heat.

this one wanted us to drive less.

there were many more and they were all thought provoking. but my favorite was that at the base of each one was this sign:

it was pretty surprising to me that the shops didn't seem to have taken the opportunity to have an environmental theme to their window displays. they just seemed to be selling the same old christmas excess. i found that a little disappointing. but at least in this shot, you can see a bit of me and miss buckle.

at least the posh illum's bolighus had a bit of a nature theme going on, even if it was mostly just stumps on which to display the expensive designer items:

we saw quite a lot of police around on the streets, usually standing together with members of the home guards (hjemmeværn) in military uniform. we even overheard one conversation where they were calling in a report of a homemade sign on the side of a building. as miss buckle said, "if only they'd had their sign professionally done..." apparently the danes' aesthetic sensibilities are quite insulted by hand lettered signs and the public had to be protected.

i've got much more to share, but i'll leave it for another post.

COP15 begins today

the COP15 meeting on climate change begins today in copenhagen.  the danish parliament hurried through legislation enabling a big crackdown by the police on protesters. there's a holding area complete with cages for 350 set up in the old brewery not far from the center of copenhagen. and denmark has been granted permission by the european union and the schengen treaty signatories to institute border controls once again should that be necessary. "we're ready," say the police. per larsen, the gentleman in charge of the copenhagen police efforts said in the new york times, "his officers would have low tolerance for behavior that deviates from "Danish society as we prefer it to be." that could get interesting.

so there you have it. we're ready. the world's top leaders are coming (not all of them for the right bit of the meeting, ahem, mr. obama), but the meeting is expected to fizzle out and not achieve any legally binding agreement. the best anyone is hoping for is political agreement, but even that looks like a bit of a longshot.

the climate skeptics have given voice again in recent weeks in the lead-up. but i see signs of climate change all around. yes, the rose in my garden had frost on it last week, but the fact is that it's december and it's still blooming and we're not talking not only one rose, but several of them (tho' i only photographed the one). on the weekend, i saw forsythia blooming down the street, tho' ours isn't (our yard is north-facing and cooler and shadier). there was a canola field near sabin's riding school with many of those characteristic yellow flowers beginning to show. the climate is changing. and if there's a chance that there's something we can do about it, we should do so, immediately. at the very least, fossil fuels are limited and we've got to come up with alternative energy sources if we're going to continue in the lifestyle to which we've been accustomed (if that's even a good idea).

i've said it before (tho' cannot find the post for the life of me), i fear that it will take losing a major european country, like the netherlands, which will be severely affected by rising sea levels, before the world really wakes up. places like the seychelles and bangladesh are in danger too, but sadly, i believe the impact of losing them wouldn't be the same as it would losing the netherlands.

if i'm honest, i can see the upside in climate change for us living here in denmark. we're already increasingly able to grow grapes and that means we can make wine (pretty good if you've got an eye on self-sufficiency and a taste for the grape elixir). farmers are able to have two crops per year from their fields. in the decade i've been here, denmark has begun to grow corn. it's not as tall and robust as what you see in iowa, but corn nonetheless. and we could use more warm, sunny days.

i'm going to go in to the city to soak in the atmosphere with my camera and we've got couchsurfers galore coming (hotel rooms are scarce) in the coming days, so it will be interesting to see how it all unfolds. stay tuned, i'm sure i'll be returning to this subject.

an organized mess

the newspapers in denmark are full of environment-related stories in the lead-up to the COP15 climate meeting here in copenhagen in december, so living a more green life is at the forefront of all of our thoughts. but in all honesty, denmark is pretty far ahead on that front. it is, after all, the home of modern wind technology (think vestas). but for me, one of the most tangible signs of denmark's commitment to the environment is how organized our dumps are.

when we went last sunday, i snapped a few pictures to show you.

husband and mig unload stuff from the ancient toyota

ancient toyota might need to be recycled itself.

maybe in the large metal container?

one for newspapers, telephone books, etc.

and another for bottles and jars

put your old carpets here.

small burnables.

keep it under 1 meter, please.

large burnables (tho' this one was closed - there was another one).

small metal things.

it's here that husband found the fabulous sewing machine.

appliances

clothing donations
and yes, that was a bag of old linens in front of that one.
and maybe i did appropriate a couple of choice patterns.

mattresses and other feathery furniture.

separate containers for ceramics and tiles, cement, marble, stone, bricks

and i didn't even get pictures of the whole area where you can put old paint cans and batteries and electrical appliances and tires and garden debris and insulation. it's amazingly organized and there are little guys in orange suits patrolling and just waiting for you to accidentally put a ceramic flowerpot in with the glass, so they can yell at you. and odin forbid you try to put something longer than a meter in the small burnables.

but it makes me feel better to go there and to separate things and know that they're being recycled (tho' to be honest, i don't really know where they go). in the spring, you can go get rich compost for your garden, as much as you can carry away for free. it's the result of the trash they collect from our houses, where we separate into green and non-green trash. and i know that the burnables are burned in a big central place where they then capture the heat and use it to heat water for the fjernvarm system that heats much of copenhagen.

i like that the environment is the central topic around here at the moment and i like feeling that i'm doing my part by separating our trash and taking it to the organized dump.