Climate talks venue becomes hothouse as key debate looms

The climate change conference area is beginning to resemble Bedlam with each passing day as the cast of characters grows

COPENHAGEN’S BELLA convention centre, on the city’s southern outskirts, becomes more and more like Bedlam with each passing day – apart from a brief respite yesterday.

It’s usually teeming with participants in the climate talks, environmental activists, observers, journalists and stallholders peddling all kinds of solutions.

The vast media centre, with banks of officially provided laptops locked to dozens of long grey tables, is filling up rapidly.

Journalists half-monitor TV screens showing live coverage of plenary sessions or the endless series of press briefings as they try to make sense of it all. God knows what it’s going to be like this week.

There are Japanese teenagers going round dressed as tree trunks to draw attention to the need to save tropical rainforests, and others dressed as a chicken, a crocodile and a polar bear. Every day, groups of young environmentalists stage events such as a “rain storm” or a Robin Hood “roleplay”, provided by the UK Youth Coalition.

More seriously, 23-year-old Anna Keenan from Brisbane, Australia, and six other activists from different countries are staging a hunger strike for climate justice near the Youth Arcade. Taking just water and salt to stay alive, they have fasted for more than 36 days and now look weak and emaciated, but are determined to continue the protest.

Young people from 13 countries – Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden and the US – have “adopted” their chief negotiators. These trackers closely monitor what’s going on and report back to their home countries via dedicated blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

Outside, under the elevated metro station, devotees of Supreme Master Ching Hai – an oddly blonde Vietnamese “spiritual teacher” with a cheeky smile – stand around in the cold every day, handing out leaflets proclaiming that eating meat is “a major cause of global warming”, and that we should all become vegans.

Tens of thousands braved the bitter cold to take part in a multinational protest march on Saturday from the Danish parliament to the Bella centre.

“Bla, bla bla – act now!”, read the most numerous placards. “There is no Planet B”, said another. Leftists carried a banner saying “F**k capitalism, not the climate”.

Speakers at the rally included Danish model Helena Christensen, Bollywood actor Rahul Bose, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former president Mary Robinson, who’s in Copenhagen for a Women’s Leadership on Climate Justice forum today. This was followed by a candlelight vigil and a vigorous “climate dance-off”.

Even before the demonstration got under way, climate change deniers – gathered here under the umbrella of a right-wing Washington lobby group, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) – were staging some street "theatre" near the central station, based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes.

The relatively small group was cheered on by Lord (Christopher) Monckton, Britain’s most vocal climate change denier. Last week, he branded young American activists who invaded a CFACT meeting shouting support for an energy revolution as “crazed Hitler Youth”, saying they “know no climate science. They know nothing”.

Ice sculptures go with the weather, although a brief rise in temperatures melted WWF’s polar bear in a square on Strøget, the city’s long pedestrian street, exposing the bronze skeleton cast by animal sculptor Mark Coreth. But two ice Maasai warriors, carved on behalf of Oxfam, are still standing outside the Bella centre.

Every major public space has outdoor exhibitions on climate change; there is no escape from it. The most spectacular is in Rådhuspladsen (city hall square), with a huge tethered helium globe surrounded by glowing green pavilions; it’s the focus of nightly “raves” featuring DJs Mike Sheridan, Negash Ali, Vinnie Who and Electrojuice.

Siemens, the giant German engineering firm, is the main sponsor of “Hopenhagen”, as the city is calling itself during the climate summit; the slogan is plastered all over the main metro station at Kongens Nytorv (king’s new square), where there’s also a stunning series of large format photographic images of the Earth’s diversity.

Other industrial interests using the summit as a promotional opportunity include Renault, which is offering test drives of its prototype electric cars, and the European Chemical Industry Council, which has sponsored Turning the Tide on Climate Change, a new book that's claimed to be "both entertaining and instructive".

PR companies are here in force, promoting “side events” such as a weekend symposium to “highlight the potential of natural gas [a fossil fuel] to accelerate the world’s transition to a low-carbon economy”, or an encounter with indigenous people from the Amazon region of Brazil talking about the importance of their rainforest communities.

As if that wasn't enough, No Logoauthor Naomi Klein and Guardianclimate crusader George Monbiot were among the line-up at Klimaforum, an "alternative summit" in the city centre, organised by a coalition of 30 Danish non-governmental organisations and student groups. "Go out and fight for Utopia!", ageing Danish engineer and former politician Niels Meyer told them all.