Day One at COP 15 - first impressions and our blogs of the day

An outdoor three hour wait in line to register in near freezing temperatures was not what I expected my first impressions of COP 15 in Copenhagen to be!

OK, lets get past that. I am here with two of the Lloyd's Register Group's leading climate change experts, Sean Cuthbert and Dr Anne-Marie Warris. Sean is here representing our energy business stream, and as fate would have it, we stood in line with Paul Genoa, Director of Policy Development for the Nuclear Energy Institute out of Washington D.C. Sean commented on their conversation:

My first thought was, "why is nuclear energy actively participating in a climate change conference?" My second question was, "what are the challenges facing the increased participation of nuclear energy in our overall energy mix?" Over the duration of our two hour conversation, Paul and I had an engaging, two-way conversation about nuclear technology, the challenges of PR and the recycling of nuclear fuel within the nuclear energy supply chain.

Anne-Marie is a veteran of COP conferences, with the COP 6 conference in Holland being her first. Anne-Marie's first thoughts on COP 15 in Copenhagen included:

It is interesting how the interest in these negotations has increased and with it the participation of new NGO's and other relevant stakeholders. We saw substantial media interest, including a lot of TV film crews, filming during our extended wait in line. I understand that the number of press equals or surpasses the number of negotiators. A long way away from the early COP's when media were few and far between.

The image to the right is from the COP 15 "Fossil of the Day" competition.

For every day of the COP 15 conference (or at least almost every day), we will be posting links to several other blogs around climate change the COP 15 conference.

Hope you find some of them interesting.

The East Anglia climate science debate

Will Copenhagen be enough?

How I wish the flat earthers were right

And here's one from a fellow COP 15 blogger who wrote this blog as she was heading out to Copenhagen.

Tomorrow's blog will focus on the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) meeting regarding Designated Operational Entities (DOE's).