COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of climate activists marched in Copenhagen yesterday to urge negotiators at UN talks to agree a strong treaty to fight global warming but violence marred a rally that began as a carnival.
Part of a global “Day of Action” of climate rallies from Australia to the United States, the main march was held with dancers, drummers and banners proclaiming: “There is no planet B” and “Change the politics, not the climate”.
With some activists dressed as penguins with signs reading: “Save the Humans!” they marched peacefully to the conference centre on the outskirts of the city where 192 nations are meeting from Dec. 7-18 to agree a new UN climate pact.
But riot police detained between 600 and 800 people around the Danish capital after some black-clad demonstrators threw bottles and smashed windows.
“And the number is growing,” police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch said.
Police said four cars were set on fire during the evening elsewhere in the city. One policeman was hurt by a stone.
“You don’t have to exert that kind of violence to be heard,” Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister presiding at the UN talks, said. She condemned rioters after welcoming the main march at a candlelit vigil outside the conference centre.
Estimates of the number of people in the peaceful march ranged up to 100,000 by organisers, who hope the rallies will put pressure on a concluding summit of 110 world leaders on Thursday and Friday.
In the main march, some held a giant inflatable snowman as a symbol of the threat of melting from warming caused mainly by burning fossil fuels that the UN panel of climate scientists says will bring desertification, floods, heat waves and rising seas.
The demonstration won wide praise.
“They marched in Berlin, and the wall fell. They marched in Cape Town, and the wall fell,” South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu told a candlelit vigil. “They marched in Copenhagen — and we are going to get a real deal.”
“There is a lot to fight for in the remaining week of negotiations,” said Kumi Naidoo, chair of the organising group “TckTckTck”. Activists want the talks to agree a full legal treaty — a goal most governments say is out of reach.
Elsewhere, thousands of Australians held a “Walk Against Warming.“ Naidoo said 4,000 events, such as marches or candlelit vigils, were being held from Fiji to Nepal to show support for deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
In Copenhagen, Caroline, a Danish girl aged 7, carried a homemade sign saying: “Look after our world until I grow up”.
“Mountains are changing, glaciers are melting,” said Nepalese Sherpa Pertamba, who came to Denmark to demonstrate with a group of 30 mountaineers. “Now is the time to think about future generations.”
In Sydney, protesters carried placards reading: “I like clean energy and I vote”, “No meat, no heat” and “No new coal mines,“ a reference to Australia’s status as one of the world’s leading exporters of coal.
Inside the conference hall in Copenhagen, delegates claimed progress on some fronts but the hardest decisions on sharing out curbs on greenhouse gas emissions and funding to help the poor are likely to be left for the summit.
“We have made considerable progress over the course of the first week,” Denmark’s Hedegaard said. She said she would hold talks today with 48 environment ministers.
“We still have a daunting task in the next few days,” she said.
She said negotiators had advanced on texts such as defining how new green technologies such as wind and solar power can be supplied to developing nations and in promoting use of forests to soak up greenhouse gases.
But delegates said there were deep splits on issues such as raising funds for poor nations and sharing the burden of CO2 cuts.
Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said he hoped for more action by all.
“China is calling on the United States to do more. The United States is calling on China to do more. I hope that in the coming days everyone will call for everyone to do more.”
