Protesting (Against?) Copenhagen

The first image, from 2007, is from the Flickr page for the World Development Movement. The group's part of the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition, with some affiliates attending Copenhagen (emphasis added at the quote below):

The United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen run from Monday 7 – Friday 18 December. These have been heralded as critical talks in agreeing an international deal on climate change. However, at the moment they are increasingly seen as another way for rich counties to exert their power on developing countries and reinforce an economic system that is failing the world’s poorest people.

These shots are from the coalition's London rally this weekend:

More pictures at the Guardian's website, and the BBC's.

The Guardian's wire report is here, "Climate Change Protesters Take to London Streets"

Thousands of people calling for a deal on climate change at next week's United Nations conference in Copenhagen marched through central London on Saturday, encircling the Houses of Parliament in a human wave of blue-clad demonstrators.

London's Metropolitan Police said about 20,000 people joined the Stop Climate Chaos march, which began at Grosvenor Square and wound its way to the Parliament building on the River Thames. Organizers put the turnout at 40,000.

"We wanted to make a positive statement," said retired teacher Pip Cartwright, 72, from Witney southern England. "It's for the future. It's not my generation that's going to have the problem to solve."

The coalition, which includes groups such as Oxfam, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the WWF, called the protest "The Wave," and organizers asked marchers to dress in blue. The march ended with a mass "wave" around Parliament. Thousands more people attended climate protests in Glasgow and Belfast, as well as in European cities including Brussels, Paris and Dublin.

The piece rightly addresses the Climategate scandal, but unfortunately adopts the tone of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who's quoted: "Prime Minister Gordon Brown told The Guardian newspaper that the world must not be distracted by 'behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-Earth climate skeptics'."

Right. "Flat-earthers."

Apparently, "Similar protests were staged in Berlin, Paris, Brussels and Dublin."

Der Spiegel reported earlier on the global left's program to incite Seattle-like conditions for Copenhagen, "Climate Change Summit Becomes a Target for Protest."

Is global warming the new globalization? Environmental activists are hoping that demonstrations at next month's climate summit in Denmark can forge a protest movement like the anti-globalization movement seen after the WTO riots in 1999. But the Danish authorities have other ideas.

If you missed Seattle, you won't want to miss Copenhagen. That, at least, is what Tadzio Müller, a political scientist and climate activist with Climate Justice Action -- a global network of activists and non-governmental organizations committed to combating climate change -- is telling people. The mass protest movement, he hopes, is turning green.

He won't have to wait long to see if he's right. In just two weeks, dozens of world leaders will gather in the Danish capital in an attempt to agree on a global deal to halt global warming. But with many politicians dragging their feet, pessimism that a binding agreement will be forged is growing.

Environmentalists would like to do what they can to turn up the pressure. And when it comes to demonstrations they plan to stage during the 11-day summit, optimism is as plentiful as CO2 emissions in the US. Leaders say they expect thousands, if not tens of thousands, to show up in support of what they call "fundamental" change in global emissions practices.

"We feel that right now in Copenhagen there is a real opportunity for things to come together a little bit like they did 10 years ago at the World Trade Organization protest in Seattle," Müller told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

The Danish police are preparing, notes this article:

We are ready," Mogens Lauridsen, head of operations at Copenhagen police, told AFP late Saturday.

"We have mobilised enough force from the entire kingdom to handle the heaviest task the modern police has ever been called upon to assume," he said.

"We have anticipated every contingency, including the worst. We are confident, but we expect excesses because there will surely be protesters looking for violence."

Yep, fundamentally anarchist, these folks are always looking for violence.

Of course, the fundamental stupidity of the protest organizers is inescapable. As Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy notes, at his entry, "Copenhagen: The Next Seattle?":

This seems like a very poor model to follow. First of all, the green movement doesn't need a "coming out party." It's basic arguments are publicly understood in a way that the anti-WTO protesters' issues weren't.

Second, Seattle-style tactics make sense if you're trying to prevent leaders from getting anything done, such as signing new free-trade agreements. But when it comes to carbon emissions, most environmentalists want leaders to reach an agreement. Demonstrations are certainly warranted, but turning Copenhagen into the kind of tear gas-filled battlefield that typically forms outside of trade talks these days is not exactly conducive to political progress.

Actually, these nihilists and Che wannabes are looking for "progress." The want to smash the state system and "imperialist oppression." And that's kind of absurd, since the folks on the inside are global totalitarians who want to bring about "social justice" nearly as much as the activists on the streets. It's a matter of method, really, and all hypocritically evil in the end - a collectivist campaign against the world's humanity.