MEDIA & IMPACT REPORT:



The official website for the Copenhagen Climate Conference has been taken down, and traffic is being redirected to : “The Official Website of Denmark”

Near the end of the proceedings at last months U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, news was posted to the official Conference website (COP15.dk) that capturing Carbon Dioxide (CO2) at the source (of industrial emissions) and storing it underground is not likely to become a measure supported by the UN-backed Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) this year. A committee under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has discussed the issue, but delayed any decisions until future summits.

Please don’t bother clicking on the above-mentioned COP15.dk link though, because less than a month after the conclusion of the conference, this newslink is now unavailable, along with all the rest of the COP15.dk website! Instead, all traffic is being directed to “The Official Website of Denmark”.

What we’re left with, as a reference on this historic event less than a month later, is a mere footnote that states: “this page contains a selection of some of the most popular content from Denmark’s Host Country website for UN Climate Change Conference 2009 – cop15.dk ”

What possible reasons could there be for taking down this official site so quickly? What benefits could possibly be derived from removing this enormous resource? Most importantly, what are the perceived repercussions of such an obviously hasty demise of what should have our greatest reference point on Climate Change at the end of 2009, if not an actual public launchpoint as we move forward through the Post-Copenhagen letdown, and proceed with all the work adn understanding that still needs to be accomplished?

Even though we are already 10% of the way into the 21st Century, perhaps it still might be too much to expect that we should have been able to innovate and apply apply the formidable network technologies (and all their associated ingenuity) to enable a more meaningful understanding of our collective challenges and opportunities, and perhaps even effect some genuine and dramatic change upon our shared views of the World. At least we should have been able to clearly communicate the social and technical intricacies of a subject that affects our entire species, rather than bickering about politicized views and dogma with circular arguments within linear Comments sections.

From it’s very outset however, the official COP15 site was found lacking in it’s role to inform and manage the expectations of the entire Human Race on the subject of Climate Change. Considering the enormous scope of such an undertaking, we can at least offer COP15.dk a passing grade, and be thankful that we had alternatives to fall back on for clear explanations, incisive reporting, and progressive advancement of so many critical subjects that affect our climate…In the absence of any clear and progressive leadership.

Take for example the important subject of “Carbon Capture and Sequestration” (CCS). According to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), this important area of study and industrial development has been indefinitely sidelined by the results of Copenhagen, at least according to the now UN-available news release. Instead, at the new repository for the entire COP15 Conference, a search for “carbon capture” now yields 4 (FOUR!) results only. In a forthcoming Environauts report, we will be looking at where the Future of CCS can take us, but suffice to say that we have little to go on according to the results of the Copenhagen Conference.

So why would the COP15 organizers wish to leave us in the dark ?

Perhaps this closure of the official COP15 site simply results from the Danish government wishing to capitalize (or at least benefit) from the enormous residual traffic still going to the COP15.dk site?

Perhaps the endless streams of destructively polarized debates in the Comments sections at COP15.dk were too volatile to survive as a testament to the times we’ve just lived in.

Perhaps it was just easier to pull the plug on COP15.dk, than to properly archive and disable all the functions that might have represented too much of a serverload moving forward. Perhaps this resource was just too burdensome to maintain, at this early turning point in the 21st Century.

Like any of the many of the other critical subjects and announcements previously covered at COP15.dk, we’re now left to take matters of CCS into our own hands. Luckily Google has cached the basic pronouncement made on CCS last month, as a reminder to take nothing for granted from the Past, since it can be just as fleeting as the many un-formed possibilities that await us in the Future…