Slater's Blog from Copenhagen
Tuesday, December 15

Copenhagen. Wow. I’m here, and I’m so tired my fingers ache just typing this. We (my mom Wendy Jewell, our producer D.B. and I) have been awake for over 24 hours, and to say the least, it’s been interesting.

It’s strange… sometimes when travelling, events seem miles away from each other. The morning we went to the airport to fly to Amsterdam seems so long ago. But I’m so happy we’re here, and I know time will fly. We'd been trying to get to Copenhagen for the Climate Change Conference for a while and we weren’t having any luck. Then something wonderful happened. My Aunt Kate and Uncle Bernie stepped up to get the ball rolling. Then my friends Mark Cavanagh, Holly Carter, Meesh, Christina, Kathy & Amy Eldon of Creative Visions and my old friends from The MY HERO Project, all rallied around to help us get here, to see first-hand what’s going on, document it and do what we can to spread the word about the ticking clock that is global warming. Thanks to them, I'm writing this to you from Copenhagen.

Slater photographs Copenhagen crowd at night

After a red eye flight from Toronto to Amsterdam, we spent about 4 hours in a very cool airport chocolate shop café. We were all tired but very excited and a series of maniacal giggles came upon us every few minutes. I believe we earned the wrath of many weary travelers in that café... but not Danish Santa Claus. That guy loved us. I asked Santa what he thought about climate change. He said he did not like “warm.” How fitting that he sang, “Let it Snow” and “White Christmas.” We will miss Santa, but hopefully, he’ll still be there on our return flight. We'll update him on the conference and "warm."

We then flew to Copenhagen. On our flight we met a man who owned a fishery in Alaska, and I thought he was fascinating. He told us that, whenever someone denied global warming was happening, he would tell them how he’s watched rapidly decreasing glaciers dramatically and permanently change the landscape all around him over the past 25 years.

As we flew into Copenhagen, it was exciting to see 20 wind turbines protruding from the bay, like beacons for the conference. Also in the bay was the Greenpeace ship, bearing the sign STOP GLOBAL WARMING HERE.

Slater on her first night in Copenhagen

Later, we got to our apartment and I lightly dozed. After I took a leisurely shower, I checked my email and got the message that my supposedly confirmed press badges (reserved at the Bella Center) might not be reserved afterall. 40,000 people were confirmed for badges, only 15,000 actually got them. Panic ensued, and we rushed out the door with our cameras and bloodshot eyes and tried to make it to the Bella Center. We took a bus to get to a train, but we found out we couldn’t get to the train. They were all stopped due to bomb scares.

A deeper confusion than before descended upon us. The nice girl who helped us get this far had to run, and we were left alone, with the police vans and bystanders, on the curb with no bus and no taxi. Dan had this fancy app on his iPhone that found cabs for him, but it was all in Danish when he called so it just added to the mix of hunger, confusion and sleep deprivation. After a small wait, we threw ourselves at a taxi and proceeded to the Bella Center.

Our taxi stopped at the Bella Center and shortly after we heard this RAP RAP RAP on the window of Dan’s door. A policeman quickly opened his door, and we all thought he was going to drag Dan out. He informed us we had to move NOW. We told the nice policeman where we were going and jumped out of our taxi to walk to the Bella Center. When we arrived, we approached a policeman blocking our way into the Bella Center, as hundreds poured out of it. “You can’t go into the Bella Center…. It’s 6 pm, and the doors into the Center close at 5 pm”. I was disappointed. After hours of traveling and rushing we were turned away. Maybe tomorrow?

Slater relaxes with a couple of Copenhagen's finest

We stumbled our way through a metro until we dropped at a nice French restaurant for a while. After catching our breath, we got groceries and headed over to a free concert given by Gogol Bordello, which around 1,500 people had shown up for. It was fun, but I was quickly running out of steam, and we hopped in a taxi and went back to our apartment where I sat down to write this blog. I can’t believe I’m still awake. I hope we have an awesome day tomorrow, we may be interviewing Emily Hunter, the daughter of the late Bob Hunter, who was a founder of Greenpeace. She's a reporter for MTV Canada. She told us that tomorrow an ‘action’ (a demonstration) will be taking place outside the Bella Center so we’re going to sneak into the crowd to get some footage. Seeing as we are still badgeless, (and, according to one source, the conference is getting “weirder and weirder”) we’ll be taking advantage of every chance meeting, every interview we can get. I personally want to film the US Youth Delegation. They sound… interesting. More later...