13 December 2009

news from the inside

Windmills, glogg and a Chinese fim star

The conference was closed on Sunday and so we went on a guided tour of Malmo, the Swedish city famed for its eco-credentials. Malmo is just across the water from Copenhagen.

The approach is pretty impressive as the train crosses the bridge passing by the world’s third largest off shore wind farm: forty eight 1.3MW each wind turbines. But we were a bit less impressed to find that most residents of the exemplary zero carbon energy Western Harbour development were driving cars. Although to be fair, it was really cold and I am not sure I would cycle in Malmo if I had to go a long distance. I wondered are people driving because there are not enough local facilities? No-one could give us any statistics or monitoring of how much they had managed to cut the carbon, or any lessons learned. In the afternoon we got a tour of the city from a bright, eco-aware young woman called Malin. She was great and pointed out lots of eco-features to us like the cycle pumps and cycle ways. She was the only person we met who seemed to understand the issues.

Back in Copenhagen we warmed ourselves up in the bar over a glass of glogg.  It’s a Scandinavian mulled wine with raisins and almonds. We all got a bit depressed talking about the chances of the world ever becoming sustainable.

In the evening we met Chinese film star Li Bing Bing  She was helping to launch the cube (see right hand side). It’s an art installation project with a cube made out of recycled shipping containers representing a tonne of CO2.  Film images are projected on to all sides and it is quite amazing to look at. It was set up one of the small lakes in Copenhagen so it reflected in the water. Matt Mellen who used to work at BioRegional was one of the driving forces behind the cube. He put loads of his own time into it unfunded. That’s the sort of dedication we can see all around us in Copenhagen.

Sue Riddlestone
Executive Director and co-founder