Copenhagen diary (10/12/09)

* Relations between the Danish police and climate protesters at Copenhagen have remained cordial, but things threatened to boil over at 3am yesterday when 100 officers raided a house being used by the campaign group Climate Justice Action, on Ragnhild Street in the north of the city. Apparently the police thought they were about to uncover a cache of dangerous weapons. Instead, a spokesman admitted later, they discovered "58 fluorescent tubes containing a mixture of paint and oil, closed in both ends with candle wax, 193 riot shields, nine metal cages measuring 4mx2m..." The drowsy campaigners said they also nabbed a power drill, an angle grinder, some wooden props and bicycle tools. Would love to know what they were planning.

* We turn now to the frustrations of journalists and bloggers seeking to record the wit and wisdom of Canadian writer Naomi Klein, only to be curtly informed that she is reserving all her interviews for the Al Jazeera television network. When one curious event organiser asked her to explain the reason behind this wall of silence, she replied: "I like them. Oh, and my husband works there." Klein's unflinching loyalty to the environmental cause is commendable.

* An emailed press release from Craig Rucker, executive director of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and (not so) notable climate-change sceptic, arrived in our inboxes yesterday. In a speech in the Danish capital on Tuesday, he argued that the summit delegates "represent the greatest threat to the health, safety, and standard of living for all mankind since the fall of 20th-century totalitarianism". In his tireless pursuit of the facts, he has travelled to "a dozen UN conferences in such places as Cairo, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Bali, Cancun, and Kyoto".

* Readers of Tuesday's Copenhagen diary will remember the tale of the Angry Mermaid, a Friends of the Earth representative clad in suitably scaly garb, who was seen flapping around outside the climate talks encouraging people to draw attention to "the corporate lobby groups undermining effective climate action". But yesterday, the irate mermaid was consigned to a watery grave after being sensationally banned by summit organisers. "We were told we could not upset the corporate lobbyists," said one bitterly disappointed FOE campaigner, Asad Rehman. To which the only sensible response must be: isn't that the point?