Shoulders slumped, the prime minister of Tuvalu sat alone on Thursday in front of a few scattered brochures explaining how rising seas driven by global warming are drowning his tiny island country.
The image spoke volumes about the 11-day rollercoaster of hope and frustration that has driven negotiators, activists and even journalists at UN climate talks here to the brink of exhaustion.
The honorable Apisai Ielemia had no one to assist him, and no one had come to hear of his country’s woes.
“I am glum,” Ielemia said, adding that he had been reminiscing about the dazzling white beaches of his childhood that have since disappeared under the waves.
The cavernous hall at UN climate talks, packed the day before with thousands of climate activists, had become a ghost town, cleared to make way for ministers and some 120 world leaders descending on Copenhagen to clinch a planet-saving deal.
All told, more than 46,000 people have registered for the 194-nation UN climate body struggles to forge, frame and finalize what is arguable the most horrifically complicated international treaty ever devised.
The Bella Center, site of the talks, can only accommodate 15,000.
Beyond this island of eerie calm, the Center was bristling with nervous energy as wide-eyed participants — powered by adrenaline and caffeine — juggled cellphones, talking and texting as they rushed from meeting to meeting.
Arriving HOGS (heads of government and state) have upped the ante, and brought retinues of experts, advisors and hangers on numbering in the thousands.
Platoons of beefy body guards, wires coiled into one or both ears, scanned the perimeters with narrowed eyes as they blazed a trail for their VIPs through the crowds.
Already on Thursday — a day before what promises to be the biggest climate summit in history — dozens of world leaders boosted the buzz as they criss-crossed the venue: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israeli President Shimon Peres, Brazilian President Lula de Silva among them.
The unprecedented scale of the event has brought in “big foot” journalists as well.
Author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman created his own small scrum when he entered the media center, a football-pitch of a room accommodating the more than 3,500 journalists accredited to cover the event.
“I have never seen anything like this,” Friedman said.
Frayed nerves and sharp elbows were much in evidence as even the most hard-bitten hacks come unwound after nearly two weeks of too little sleep and too much news.
Each day brings a new set of obstacles and barriers, as the UN and Danish police reconfigure the gauntlet of security checks and machines.
Some 22,000 climate activists from 500 non-governmental organizations were conspicuous on Thursday by their absence, with less than one-in-20 even allowed to set foot in the center.
NGOs have historically played a critical role in these talks, participating as observers in closed door sessions, acting in the self-appointed role as environmental watchdogs on behalf of Earth and its most vulnerable denizens.
Outraged by the lockout, they have taken to acts of civil disobedience, triggering hundreds of additional arrests after more than 1,000 protesters were locked up during a massive march last Saturday.
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