Morning Bell: They Can’t Even Run A Conference, Let Alone the Global Economy

Conn Carroll / December 15, 2009

The climate treaty negotiations inside Copenhagen’s Bella Center at the United Nations Climate Change Conference ground to a halt yesterday when the G-77, the largest group of developing nations, walked out. These poorer nations demanded that richer nations sign a treaty that includes a large transfer of wealth to the developing world to compensate for the developed world’s historical contribution to global warming. The G-77 countries ended their walkout after less than two hours, perhaps because global warming has had no apparent impact on December Copenhagen temperatures.

Stuck out in the cold trying to get into the convention center that the developing countries had left were thousands of registered participants including delegations from universities, trade unions, and the press. It took more than 8 hours for non-governmental delegates, like Heritage’s Steven Groves and Ben Lieberman, to check in on December 14th. The New York Times described the registration system as chaotic, and notes that the overflow of freezing unregistered delegates forced the Copenhagen police to shut down the subway stop nearest the conference. The problem: despite some two years of planning, the United Nations organizers failed to come up with a way to fit the 45,000 people they registered for the conference into the 15,000 person capacity Bella Center. Oops. (more…)