The UN Climate Summit, otherwise known as the COP15, which took place in Copenhagen last month, was stated to be 'the last chance to save the planet', due to the short time-frame that exists to tackle climate change before it's too late. This article is a first-hand account of being in Copenhagen at the summit, and looks at what we must do now that world leaders have failed in any attempt at dealing with the greatest problem human kind has ever known.
 
The most obvious presence of the COP15 climate summit in Copenhagen city was the Hopenhagen exhibit. Some temporary shop spaces were set up in the city hall square, illuminated on the outside with green neon, and on a giant inflatable sphere, representing the volume of one tonne of CO2, animations and videos were projected to inform us of all the reasons we have for being hopeful; world leaders and business people were to meet up to discuss the future of our climate.

Outdoor photo exhibits had been set up to show us some of the world’s natural wonders we stand to lose, and from an enormous banner headed with the green Hopenhagen logo, two skinny blonde kids flexed their muscles. Earth Bodyguard, the banner proclaimed. I was not alone in failing to be inspired with confidence.

To the thousands of people who came from all over Europe and the world to demonstrate about the array of issues that surround the COP15, it was common knowledge that even the most far reaching proposals for a deal at the summit would fall short of what is necessary to prevent a global disaster. As a gathering of some of the most well-informed individuals in terms of world affairs, very different stories about the likely outcome of the talks were being told.
   
In the various spaces around the city where basic accommodation was provided to host the large numbers of protesters, the conversation was dense with the gruesome detail of how and by whom the world is exploited, and why it’s in such a mess, and what the COP15 proposed, or proposed not to do about it. The kind of conversations that provide insight into the depth and scale of the problems we share.

If the presence of such large numbers of activists in Copenhagen did not serve to encourage world leaders to promote genuine climate justice, it was at least a grand sharing of ideas. Thousands of people will have returned home from Copenhagen with a clearer understanding of what humanity is up against here, as well as a huge variety of ideas, some more credible than others, about how we might better our world. Ideas that will be disseminated further into the population as a whole.

Outrage and despair about the COP agenda was fairly universal amongst the people I spoke to. It seemed clear to everyone outside the Bella centre (The COP venue), and to a great portion of those inside, that the COP agenda was set to fail not only because it did not propose tough enough measures to curb climate change, but because its only proposed solutions were market-based. They rely on the trading of pollution, promising nothing but a fatal return to business as usual, yet freshly encumbered by a whole new strata of bureaucracy. 

One English activist I spoke to had been planning a banner drop, to change the huge Hopenhagen banner with the Aryan Earth Bodyguards, to say Hopelessenhagen, but they were deterred by the severity of Danish law, and the plan was aborted. “Not a Hope-in-hell-enhagen.” He concluded. Not just the action, but the whole thing. The summit. The future.

Events all over the city voiced a growing consciousness that climate change is about much more than CO2. The issues surrounding the COP encompass everything under the sun: The future of biological and human diversity is at stake, along with every economy and every job. Every aspect of our individual lifestyles and outlooks demands an overhaul to avoid any one of the array of potential catastrophes.
   
On the 12th December, one-hundred thousand took to the streets to demand, broadly speaking, climate justice. World leaders were urged to take action not only on the most central issue; cutting carbon emissions to minimise global temperature increase to the crucial 1.5 degrees, but also to create green jobs, safeguards to ensure the survival of indigenous peoples (and their knowledge), a massive downscaling of the meat industry (one of the major CO2 contributors), and increased freedom of migration for those displaced by climate chaos, amongst other things.

All of these disparate concerns are factors in this, even if some of the issues raised seem a touch obscure. It is the most universal quandary humanity has faced so far.

All the issues marginalised and excluded from the COP agenda were highlighted on the streets that day. Their spokespeople are left with no legal recourse for being heard or integrated into a democratic process of decision-making, and are left to march the streets with flags and banners and slogans.

If non-violent action ceases to be an effective tool for getting heard, already there is good reason for outrage. If the public right to protest is brought into dispute, there is cause for great concern. After all, once we’ve all cast our vote and written letters to our MPs and there has been no response, it is the only power we have.

It was not long after the start of the demo that police sectioned off a block of several hundred protesters towards the back of the demo, and proceeded to handcuff them and sit them down on the cold ground in rows, where they were left for three hours without water or being allowed to relieve themselves, before being taken away in coaches to a specially constructed detention facility in the Valby district of the city.

According to changes in Danish law passed in recent months, being suspected of intent to partake in an action is enough to get you arrested. There was no particular incident to prompt the arrests. Only three of the nearly 1000 arrestees on that day were charged with an offence. It became clear how much the authorities value the presence and diversity of concerned protesters outside the Bella centre.

The demo on December the 14th was to call for greater freedom of migration for peoples displaced by climate change. It is increasingly clear that this is one of the major humanitarian issues of our times.      

The demo was declared a victory by many. Not as a catalyst for positive change, or because it succeeded greatly on promoting an awareness of the issue, but because no-one got arrested. That was the victory.

Upon reaching parliament square towards the end of the demonstration, a large group spontaneously surrounded a giant inflatable globe, a representation of a metric ton of CO2 in the parliament square, tearing  it from its fastenings and rolling it towards the canal.
It might not have been the most intelligent of actions, but it did provide some compelling scenes as the giant globe, which was intended to give an idea of the metric volume of our impacts on the environment, tumbled across the square.

The globe served as a symbol of the determination to green-wash the market based intentions of the COP. It was the only available object upon which to display discontent. Double lines of riot police and dog-handlers with their hounds, followed on by armoured police vehicles moved the demonstration on. The lack of arrests was only due to the participants of the demonstration keeping together very tightly and remaining in solidarity with one another.
 
On 16th December, a demonstration entitled 'Reclaim Power' was carried out. I saw very little of the Reclaim Power demonstration on the 16th December. Up to five hundred delegates from inside the conference centre, including indigenous groups, environmental groups and delegates from poor southern nations, were to stage a mass walk-out in protest of  the undemocratic and exclusive nature of the talks.

They were to meet with demonstrators outside the Bella Centre and form a 'people's assembly', outside, at which the troubles of the world were to be discussed in a fair and unbiased way by all those who are usually left without a voice. On the day, police brutality ensured there was little chance of getting anywhere near the fence, let alone getting inside the grounds of the Bella centre.

The best effort used an inflatable lilo to bridge the narrow moat surrounding the fence. Three people managed to get over the fence only to be set upon by police dogs off the leash. Most shockingly, the delegates attempting to leave the Bella Centre in protest of the un-democratic and exclusive nature of the talks, were not merely prevented from leaving the building, some of them were beaten with truncheons to keep them inside and away from the small gathering that was taking place outside the grounds.
 
Personally I saw little of the demonstration on the 16th. After fifteen minutes all but ten or so of the 150-strong block I was with had been arrested. I was taken to the temporary detention facility in the Valby district that had been constructed especially for COP15 protesters; rows of large cages in a warehouse.

Since none of the people locked up inside them had done anything, no one was concerned about actual charges being brought against them, and there was a healthy spirit of defiance inside. I almost felt sorry for the police men and women having to put up with the level and intensity of heckling. Not that it stopped me joining in.
 
Some of the officers on duty, in calmer moments, took time to converse through the wire mesh with some of the calmer protesters.

They were polite and interested to discuss the views of their captives in a very reasonable Danish sort of a way. They were, by and large, willing to concede that the new laws to allow pre-emptive arrests pose a great danger to our liberty as Europeans.

They agreed that our detention was unjust and excessive. Some had a ‘just doing my job and obeying orders’ attitude to police violence, others were adamant that police use violence out of fear. But the polite conversations did not often last long. To control any form of defiance from the detainees the police routinely used pepper-spray and their truncheons.

One young man was dragged into the next room by his hair. At one point a police officer even started waving his gun at people in an attempt to repress the noise and chaos. 
 
A young officer I spoke to admitted he was disturbed. He said he was going to go home and have a long think about what he had seen that day. Perhaps it did not resemble the free and democratic Denmark he had been brought up to believe he was living in.

Copenhagen has not only demonstrated the unwillingness and inability of politicians to achieve workable solutions to the impending climate crisis, it has shown up the limitations imposed on our own abilities as European citizens to prompt positive change.
When the police are used to silence the voices of non-violent protesters, it causes serious damage to the relationship between the police and the public.

These are people concerned about the future of our world, and when the police are used to repress them, it creates immense resentment.
What I learned in Copenhagen is that police repression and violence serves both to radicalise and alienate people: If they wish to help proliferate a culture of what the UK police call ‘domestic extremism’, they are going exactly the right way about it.
 
Direct action is undertaken by only a minute portion of society. If more Europeans start to speak out and take action rather than remaining apathetic, they will find out what activists have long known; that our kind of democracy permits a paper vote every few years, and not a meaningful voice.

They will find how severely our rights to protest have been eroded, and realise once it is already too late, that there is no other legal recourse for being heard.

• Rory Wilkinson is an artist living in St Margarets Bay.

Rory's blog about Denmark using new legislation to repress legitimate protest, shows how democracy is being mis-used for vested multinational corporate and political profit. I have no doubt after seeing Kingsnorth, London and other protesters met with provocation by aggressive, armed and militarised police that oppressing minorities, using paranoid anti-terror legislation that we have been fooled into believing oppression of the majority will not follow. Icelanders exerted their citizen sovereignity on their government. Mervyn King warned government and the public years ago that moral hazard would be disastrous for the country "It is moral hazard that has led us to where we are".  He has advised government that there must be cutbacks in government salaries in line with the millions of people at risk of losing jobs and homes while no sign of austerity can be discerned in tax-funded sectors or in former public utilties, railways etc.  All party politicians appear to be parasitic predators, harmful, damaging and destructive. Citizen sovereignity was exercised in Iceland during the financial restructuring, we must take away sovereignity from squalid uncaring toxic parliament which is dragging us down - I don't believe government bad debts ought to be paid by us. 

Brilliant article Rory! I was there too and I couldn't have put it better myself.