COP15

I turn up early at St. Pancras after no sleep due to traffic outside my welcoming sister's Kentish town window. I'm pleased that the London bus service has run smoothly enough to have brought me here. As everyone travelling with the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition converges, I notice an ice sculpture adjacent to us standing as an ironic nod to capitalism, a blonde woman stands in front of the sculpture with a mic negotiating an item for the television. It's 4.45am and she's smoothing her hair before take after take holding the mic up to the frozen sculpted people, pretending to interview them. I have come alone. The first guys I speak to are Daniel, who is representing UNITE and Rory from the Woodland Trust. These are just two of many good people I'm to meet and spend my time in Copenhagen with. I'm asked how I came to be where I'm standing. My first answer that comes to mind is that my father has been campaigning on behalf of the Green Party in Bristol my entire life (I'm twenty-three). I used to be embarrassed by it, when everybody was more conservative and the socks with sandals were doing nothing to impress the still-married-mothers in my primary school playground. I'm proud now that he saw this coming when I was too young to. Daniel is a big guy with a backpack that has a large, folded UNITE flag protruding from it. It is the first time he's done anything like this. I think he's a little nervous. Rory wears glasses with string to keep them from straying from his neck. He's muttering something about a Danish friend who is now in charge of foreign affairs.