The Danish Foreign Ministry commissioned Mikkel Blaabjerg Poulsen to make a short film dramatizing the future of a planet that fails to change current patterns of human-induced carbon emissions. Poulsen was less influenced by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report than he was by the new Mayan disaster film, 2012.
They played this during the climate talks’ opening ceremony.
It’s always a little hazardous when policy wonks get involved in creating popular culture.
That maxim was on display later Monday night when the Mayor of Copenhagen hosted a concert and event on climate awareness. The idea was to mix music and climate talk. The featured band was the Danish act, Nephew. The warm-up act was Gro Harlem Brundtland–the former Norwegian Prime Minister and head of the panel that wrote the important Brundtland Report in the mid-19080s which brought the concept of “sustainable development” to prominence. After her rather lengthy, given the circumstances, disquisition on climate change and development, the head UN climate official, Yvo de Boer, took the stage.
Yvo barely got into his remarks when he was rather unceremoniously interrupted and pushed off stage with the glib MC rather indecorously said something to the effect of: “Sorry, Yvo, we need to keep the show going..for the planet.”
With that, Nephew–which sounds like a Danish version of Gary Numan–took the stage. Here’s some Nephew for the uninitiated:
