Seeking Security in Copenhagen

Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council and co-chair of the AFL-CIO Energy Task Force, is in Copenhagen, Denmark, to ensure that labor’s input helps shape a global climate treaty. This report follows up on his first blog from Copenhagen here.

Security is tight at the United Nations climate change conference. And security is only expected to get tighter as the conference gears up for the major ministerial meeting next week capped by the heads of state meeting on Dec.18, which President Obama will attend.

The U.S. government has a strong presence here with a U.S Center and a series of forums featuring various Cabinet members discussing the roles of their agencies in addressing climate change.

At the Center’s first event, Alexander McDonald of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) used the Center’s 6-foot globe to demonstrate the pattern of carbon emissions on a global scale over the course of a month. He showed how the emissions that contribute to global warming migrated eastward from the United States and upward into the atmosphere. The globe could be rotated and tilted to show the emissions from Asia and peat and forest burning in Indonesia swirling and curling into the skies.

Another series of images showed the impact of increased temperatures over a century on the middle portions of the United States and how increased acid levels of waters across the world have affected coral reefs and fish species. McDonald pointed out that the impact on water and land of business-as-usual policies have huge implications for the food supply across the world.

So while we deal with security in getting into the summit, the U.S. Center serves as a visual reminder that climate security is the reason we are here.

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