Environmental journalism as the link between local and global (commentary)

December 2009, Copenhagen, three in the morning. Tired of waiting for any official announcement from the COP15 presidency, a journalist friend and I decided to sleep right there in the convention center. Me on the chair, him on the table! Like us, others were dozing off in the corners of the press room. It was the last 11 days of one of the UN’s most anticipated climate change summits. We were exhausted after so many press conferences, bombastic reports, leaked documents and promises packaged with pretty words from the climate jet set. All the problems were promised to be solved. But nothing came of it. No sooner had we fallen asleep than the closing plenary was announced. Red-eyed, we watched in disbelief as the negotiations collapsed. What a resounding failure! There was no agreement. The countries didn’t see eye to eye and the solution to the end of the world was postponed once again. Weeks of hard work ended with diplomats shrugging their shoulders and promising, perhaps, something for the following year.