The COP15 opened today. As with most international meetings about elements of public interest, the first day began with much fanfare... literally. An anthem was selected for this conference (Bob Dylan's 'Hard Rain's Gonna Fall), listened to some speeches, diplomates were made to watch a touching promotional video and then were treated to some live music. Whether any of this was actually relevant to the upcoming discussions is anyone's guess, but I think that the needless ceremony is time consuming and money draining.

In a recent BBC Radio Podcast I listened to, a scientist who was interviewed made a statement that stuck with me. The gentleman interviewed contributed to the development of tidal power plants and described himself as an environmentalist. He also revealed himself to be a sceptic, not a sceptic of climate change though (as has become a trend with many people lately and a subject I'll get back to), but of the likelyness than humans will get their act together to do something about it. He said that he wished governments would stop having high profile summits on the subject and actually do something about it with the money saved (he hinted at technologies to lower global temperature using salt water mist).

Although I disagree with his point of view on attempting to simply counteract the effects by reducing the temperature of the planet, I do agree that it's likely that nothing will come out of the summit. Although I have little hope that the politicians will risk becoming unpopular with large polluting companies or risking falling behind in their countries' economies or because they don't trust the other nations to stick to their promises, I still think it's essential to at least try to mitigate the effects of global warming before we eventually end up having to deal with the after-effects and start spraying water ions into the atmosphere to cool the planet; if anything, it will at least make the cleanup job a little easier when we're past the point of no return.

The road up to the Climate Change Summit has been a bumpy one, with the so-called 'Climategate' taking place and some particularly influential individuals making claims about climate change being a hoax. Interestingly, at least one of the groups promoting scepticism is affiliated to EXXON or are a nation relying on oil exports such as Saudi Arabia. The UN and UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, recently struck back at sceptics saying that the science is reliable and the Prime Minister even went so far as to equate sceptics to flat earthers.

Past the namecalling, some groups are taking action and trying to get their views heard. Al Gore has been promoting 'Hopenhagen' and even wrote a guest article for The Huffington Post. Here in Canada, it seems that Greenpeace scaled the walls of Parliament to unfurl banners equating climate change inaction to the loss of lives.

Although I remain sceptical about there being any real results to the summit (even with the Barrackstar's presence), I'm eager to see developments in the following days.

-Adje