Snapshots from the front
Rice students report live by blog from Copenhagen climate talks

“If the 130 heads of state reflect the urgency and cooperation I saw today in lower-level leaders, our children have nothing to fear.”

Rachael Petersen, a Will Rice College sophomore, took the positive tack in her blog from Copenhagen, where she and four other Rice students are reporting from the front lines of the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

As the talks between nations advanced toward a conclusion this week, the students were keeping their eyes and ears open and their keyboards warm as they blogged about their experiences at the high-profile conference. President Barack Obama joined the proceedings for the final day of negotiations on strategies to mitigate the effects of global warming.

It hasn’t been easy going for the students of Pedro Alvarez, Rice’s George R. Brown Professor and chair of Civil and Environmental, and doctoral student Rosa Dominguez.

Large-scale protests have prompted strict limits on the number of representatives from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) allowed into the Bella Center, where the talks are being held. Petersen noted only four passes were given to the seven-member Rice contingent for the final four days, so she and others hit the streets to get what she called the “more pedestrian perspective on climate activism.” Several members of the troupe found their way to the Klimaforum, the “other climate conference” where activists and observers are going when they can’t get into the big room.

Graduate student Roque Sanchez did make it into the Bella Center on Tuesday. “We stood in line for three hours to register as NGO observers. Once we were inside, though, it certainly was a sight to behold,” he wrote, describing the center as a mash-up of the convention center and a number of temporary buildings.

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“As observers, we get to sit in and interact in these side events, hosted by NGOs or U.N. bodies, and interact with the range of attendants in the center. The range of humanity is impressive, from legions of bright-eyed organizers to delegates from every single country; there are even rock-star moments when figures like Al Gore and (environmentalist) Bill McKibben grace the halls. And the actual talks that are supposedly deciding the fate (of) climate change? They are hidden away in meeting halls where few, if any, observers are allowed to enter.”

Dominguez, who is also contributing to the series of reports at http://cop15.blogs.rice.edu, is filing her point-by-point impressions of the scene (standing in line was “hell on Earth, with waiting times up to six hours in the Danish cold”). She gave reason for hope from the negotiations. In describing the side events NGOs were allowed to monitor, she wrote agendas were well-defined with “little nonsense talk” and “very constructive attitudes.”

“All sectors see opportunities,” she blogged. “Overall, there is a feeling that it can be done.”