100,000 protest at Climate summit in Copenhagen: eye witness report

Pandas on bikes, polar bears on floats, angels and clowns thronged the sunny but bitterly cold streets of Copenhagen today united around a common issue. We need action on climate change and we need it now. Placards reading “There is no planet B” and t-shirts with “one earth, one experiment” summed it up. Helen Ward reports.

In the morning blue plastic ponchos were handed out by friends of the Earth for “the flood”, a demonstration of several thousand that went from near Klimaforum09 to the start of the main march. The organisers said 100,000 joined the rally at the start of the later march which was an impressive site. It was noisy and felt like a festival with plenty of families, bikes and home made placards.

As expected, there were representative from big NGOs like Oxfam, churches, youth organisations, feminists, animal rights activists dressed as cows, a large group of black-hooded anarchos, and even a few reasonably prominent contingents from the left including Attac, NPA, Danish Communist Party, ISO and the CWI.

If a demo like that was held in London, you wouldn’t be able to move for stalls, paper sellers and leaflets. I was surprised that there were hardly any. There were a number of free magazines, a few leaflets and the CWI were doing a petition, but otherwise very little. It was quite a nice change not having to dodge paper sellers at every turn. I actually sold several pamphlets, but people were clearly surprised when I asked for money so the culture must be quite different.

I didn’t recognise any banners from trade unions. Apparently a Vestas worker from the UK was due to speak at the rally, but I didn’t hear him. But if the trade unions weren’t there, it doesn’t mean the working class was absent. I spent some time talking to a woman from Copenhagen who had come on her own because she felt it was an important issue and likely to be a historic event. She told me about the hypocrisy of the Danish government on climate change, despite it claiming deep green credentials, and linked this to liberal right wing policies on other issues. The conservative government is pushing through privatisation of the health service in ways that sounded very similar to England, and she described local struggles by parents over education, where the authorities were “outsourcing” school dinners and even shipping them in from companies in Germany. I am sure that there were tens of thousands of working class people like her on the demo, but they were there as individuals or in campaigns rather than as organised workers in unions.

Most of the speeches I could hear were by people from developing countries demanding justice, money and binding emissions targets for the rich nations. They were angry that yesterday the EU pledged to provide $10.6bn to help developing countries in Africa, island states and other poor countries vulnerable to climate change – but this is spread over three years, and much of this is money that has already been pledged so there is not much new money. The USA has declared that it will not provide any money to countries like China.

The draft agreement published yesterday showed that there were still major disputes: there is no agreement over what they are aiming for, should it be no more than 1.5 or 2 degrees? There is no clarity on reduction targets for the rich countries, the draft puts it between 25% and 40% by 2020 from a baseline in 1990, but current reduction commitments don’t even hit the lower end of that at only 18%.

The march united people around a problem – potentially catastrophic climate change and inadequate action from world leaders. Many would also agree that the problems have been caused by something fundamental about the capitalist system, specifically the drive for ever-expanding consumption. But the march was not united around a solution. Some demanded a strong international binding agreement delivered through a cap and trade mechanism. Others urged people to have smaller familes or to give up meat. There was a lot of resonance for chants of change the system not the climate, and “anti-capitalista” rang out from some sections. Without a coherent opposition to market mechanisms there is a danger that such demonstrations will fail to take forward a progressive agenda and will provide radical cover for the market solutions.
I couldn’t stay for the whole march – it was several kilometres to the Bella centre where they were to hand over a number of sails to the COP15 organisers (imagine a windsurfing sail with slogans written on it). There were so many people that the march didn’t set off until around 3pm when it was starting to get dark with the temperature falling further. As I left, I saw one man giving away second hand warm clothes from a bike – recycling at its best.

But following this carnival start, the police clearly decided that they had to make use of their new powers, and reports suggest that several hundred people were stopped, hancuffed and kept in the freezing cold. The targets of their attack, the Black Bloc, were at the back of the march and quite possibly separated from the bulk of the march. see indymedia and other sites for updates.

See also

Copenhagen: tactics to try and neutralise the protesters

Alternatives in Copenhagen

Copenhagen warms up

Sun 13, December 2009 @ 00:04