When it comes to wind power, Americans have all kinds of excuses not to use it. "It's too expensive" or "Not in my backyard" (NIMBY: referencing that they don't want a tall, skinny, white turbine obstructing their beautiful view of the ocean or the mountains.) Let me begin by saying this is all a sham, in my opinion.
COPENHAGEN -- I arrived at the Bella Center today at 11:40—just ten minutes after the United Nations decided to ban further NGO access to the climate change conference. But they didn’t tell anyone waiting outside in the cold for more than a half an hour.
COPENHAGEN -- While hundreds of thousands of people were out marching against climate change this past weekend, world leaders inside the Bella Center slyly removed the most important number in the world from climate negotiating texts — one that more than 100 nations had already agreed to.
“There is no 1A bus running from here,” the Danish metro transit security man told me on the corner of Kongens Nytorv (King’s Center Square), where I generally get off the subway and hop onto a bus. “You have to get back on the subway, go one stop, get off at the Norreport station. Then go outside, get on a 15 bus.”
COPENHAGEN -- Unfortunately, I opted to watch four Hollywood Blockbusters in place of the inside of my eyelids on my eight-hour overnight flight—not that the screaming baby sitting in front of me, crawling into my seat, would have let me sleep even if I had wanted to. The Delta-Northwest 747 finally arrived at the Amsterdam airport at 8 a.m. this morning, on schedule for me to stand in the 45-minute customs line.
DETROIT -- I leave today for the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark -- after I take a final exam and turn in two final papers (not to mention the two papers I have to write while I'm gone, and the two exams I take on Dec. 18, the day after I return!).