Donate Now Jeff Barbee, for the Pulitzer Center
Copenhagen, Denmark
Five in the afternoon in downtown Copenhagen, billed as "Hope-nhagen."
Cold, crazy, uplifting and depressing. The climate convention is all this and more. There are dozens of presentation rooms, where anything from an almost living globe that shows the earth's changing climate to a new engine from Brazil called the Keppe Motor that promises a 70% drop in power usage for all small electrical appliances.
This is clearly where the world meets. Turbaned sheiks rub shoulders with Baltimore bureaucrats, and through it all...dare I say it? An impending sense of doom.
A deal has not been cut by the underlings that the leaders can sit down and deliberate on. Today is the make or break day. I am off in a hurry to go to the center of town for the main protest. I think I am late, but the massive police presence and the freezing cold temperatures are probably enough to keep people off the streets....or maybe not.
This story was reported for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting as part of the Copenhagen News Collaborative, a cooperative project of several independent news organizations. Check out the feed here from Mother Jones.