Day 6: Taking to the streets
I may have to take back what I said on Thursday—about the weather in Denmark. The seven-day forecast looks about as grim as everyone warned us it could be, with sub-zero temperatures on the way. The city has already started sprinkling salt on the streets, cycling paths and pavements in anticipation of ice.
So it’s pretty impressive how many people turned up at parliament yesterday, to rally ahead of a slow march through to the Bella Center. Some reports said as many as 100 000 people turned up, but I think it was more like 30 000. It took an hour to assemble, and people danced about as much to the sound of the occasional drum, as to keep the bloody flowing to extremities.
It was a crowd of ordinary folk—grandmothers with their dogs on leads, suburban mums with their kids in prams, teenagers, students, middle aged couples, the odd beatnik. There was an enormous sense of solidarity, as people carried banners saying “there is no Planet B” and “save the climate, not your money”. As the throng wended its way down the streets of the city, people had even hung banners out their apartments saying “act now”, that kind of thing. It was lovely.
But it was also bloody cold. The sun was largely gone by the time the throng reached the Bella Center at 4pm. Soon after that I headed home, curled up in bed and slept like I hadn’t in weeks.
Leonie Joubert is a science writer, reporting for Independent Newspapers from the United Nations climate negotiations taking place Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December. This is her blog-on-the-side.