Scorched

Day 4: Slow news and rain-slicked streets

Thursday, December 10th, 2009 | uncategorized | No Comments

10 Dec 2009
Leonie Joubert is a science writer, reporting for Independent Newspapers from the United Nations climate negotiations taking place in Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December. This is her blog-on-the-side.

People talk about their country’s weather the way fishermen talk about that “big” catch – it’s always more impressive in the storytelling. I strolled back to my digs through the glistening streets of a rainy Copenhagen-by-night, thinking how the weather’s been far less impressive than we were warned about.

Either Copenhagen’s winter clime is milder than the storytellers would have us believe, or climate change has arrived here. Most sources will tell you that the average winter temperature here is zero degrees – but the mercury has hovered constantly between maximums and minimums of about 4°C to 7°C. › Continue reading

Day 3: Too smart to fix the problem?

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 | uncategorized | No Comments

9 Dec 2009
Leonie Joubert is a science writer, reporting for Independent Newspapers from the United Nations climate negotiations taking place in Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December. This is her blog-on-the-side.

Blink… blink… blink…

There’s nothing more judgemental than the winking curser on a blank computer screen when you need to put some profound scribbles down on that page. It’s not writer’s block that’s stopping the flow. Nope, it’s something a more paralysing.

It’s a profound sense of impotence in the face of a global crisis as massive as climate change. This week the climate conference heard that observed environmental change as a result of rising temperatures is happening much faster than was expected. And yet, in spite of this, and in spite of the fact that we have most of the solutions we need to begin fixing things, we can’t seem to resolve the matter… and the main reason is greed and insecurity. › Continue reading

Day 2: Big carbon, and crunch time

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 | uncategorized | No Comments

8 Dec

Leonie Joubert is a science writer, reporting for Independent Newspapers from the United Nations climate negotiations taking place in Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December. This is her blog-on-the-side.

The tick… tick… tick-tick-tick-tick…tick… tick… of the central heating woke me at some unholy hour this morning.

I reached for my cellphone in the gloomy artificial light that cut through the blinds from the street outside: 2:34am glared up at me from the phone’s screen.

“Blast.”

But in the three hours of sleeplessness that followed, I lay under the thin duvet listening to the building creak and clatter its way towards the frigid Nordic dawn, and I pondered the very point that this old building was making, inadvertently or not: that for modern society to have thrived as such high latitudes, in such cold places, as those seen in parts of northern Europe, Asia, the US and Canada, you need loads of energy. › Continue reading

Day 1: What’s the end-game going to be?

Monday, December 7th, 2009 | uncategorized | No Comments

7 Dec 2009
Leonie Joubert is a science writer, reporting for Independent Newspapers from Copenhagen on the United Nations climate negotiations taking place in Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December. This is her blog-on-the-side.

“What do you expect to come out of Copenhagen?” the German TV reporter said, stabbing his mike at the guy behind me in the queue.

It was way too early for the blinding light of the camera, let alone a question like that. (Actually, it was 7:30am already, but with the mist still rolling about us in the Scandinavian winter, and sunrise still a good hour or so away, it felt too early to be out of bed, let alone faced with a question like that.)

But the truth is, that’s what everyone’s asking: what’s going to come out of Copenhagen? › Continue reading