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.