For more than two weeks this month, I commuted between two countries each day. And although it's not quite like being in Istanbul, where you can take a short boat ride to dinner in another continent, it's certainly been an experience.
It happened because, by the time I joined The Daily Telegraph last summer, there seemed to be no reasonable hotel rooms left in Copenhagen for the time of the climate summit. So I ended up in Malmö in southern Sweden, a 40-minute train ride, by bridge and tunnel, across the narrow straits between the two.
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This had its downsides, besides – inevitably – getting the two currencies hopelessly mixed up (both eschew the euro, using the krone and krona respectively). Waiting for the none-too-reliable trains in Arctic conditions (record delay: 50 minutes at 3am after the talks ran late) was no fun; nor was negotiating in a blizzard with Malmö's notoriously crooked taxis drivers (record try-on: £34 for just under a mile).
But the benefit of the commute was that it enabled me to get to know two of the world's greenest cities. Copenhagen is so environmentally minded that it has been lighting its 60ft Christmas tree by pedal power: to keep it bright, passers-by had to jump on to one of 15 special bikes and generate the electricity themselves. And Malmö claims to be even greener.
In fact, the two have a none-too-friendly rivalry. Copenha
By Geoffrey Lean Published: 5:35PM GMT 25 Dec 2009
Comments 20 | Comment on this article
For more than two weeks this month, I commuted between two countries each day. And although it's not quite like being in Istanbul, where you can take a short boat ride to dinner in another continent, it's certainly been an experience.
It happened because, by the time I joined The Daily Telegraph last summer, there seemed to be no reasonable hotel rooms left in Copenhagen for the time of the climate summit. So I ended up in Malmö in southern Sweden, a 40-minute train ride, by bridge and tunnel, across the narrow straits between the two.
This had its downsides, besides – inevitably – getting the two currencies hopelessly mixed up (both eschew the euro, using the krone and krona respectively). Waiting for the none-too-reliable trains in Arctic conditions (record delay: 50 minutes at 3am after the talks ran late) was no fun; nor was negotiating in a blizzard with Malmö's notoriously crooked taxis drivers (record try-on: £34 for just under a mile).
But the benefit of the commute was that it enabled me to get to know two of the world's greenest cities. Copenhagen is so environmentally minded that it has been lighting its 60ft Christmas tree by pedal power: to keep it bright, passers-by had to jump on to one of 15 special bikes and generate the electricity themselves. And Malmö claims to be even greener.
In fact, the two have a none-too-friendly rivalry. Copenhagen aims to be the world's first carbon-neutral capital city by 2025; Malmö to be powered entirely by renewable energy by 2030. Copenhagen boasts 250 miles of bicycle paths, with 32 per cent of commuters using two wheels; Malmö, which has a smaller area, pips it with 255 miles and 40 per cent. Copenhagen was last week named as Europe's greenest major city; Malmö brandishes an award from the UN. You get the picture…
Overall, though I liked it rather less (it must have been those taxi drivers), I thought Malmö was the more interesting of the two, because it was heavily industrialised until only recently (as well as being known as Sweden's most boring city – which is saying quite a lot).
Its proudest boast was that it had the biggest shipyard, the biggest dry-dock and the biggest crane in the world. Then disaster struck. The Berlin Wall came down and shipbuilding and other industries promptly pushed off across the Baltic to cheaper Eastern Europe.
"We found ourselves in the deepest crisis imaginable," said its mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, who showed me round. "It was a question of which path to take now that the pursuit of industry was no longer working for us. The direction we took was to promote Malmö as a centre of knowledge and an eco-town."
In a complete about-turn, it now markets itself as "Cleantech City" – and has cast off the torpor so effectively that it was recently ranked as Europe's most creative city (those taxi fares again?). The symbol of both transformations is the Western Harbour, where all that shipbuilding used to be, which has now been turned into a smart, green, modern suburb powered entirely by renewable energy produced on the spot.
Mourning that ugly crane, its old symbol, the city decided to erect another emblem on almost the same spot – and plumped for the Turning Torso, a striking white (but green) 56-storey skyscraper, twisted through 90 degrees. Its residents, like everyone else in the area, compost their food waste to produce bio-gas to run the city's buses.
In all, Malmö will cut its carbon dioxide emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2020. In the process, it is growing, and attracting people, as never before. And what is happening there, and in Copenhagen, is important to us, because the battle against climate change will be won or lost in towns and cities. They may only cover 5 per cent of the world's land surface, but they emit three quarters of its greenhouse gases. And as the World Wildlife Fund points out, they will invest $250 trillion in infrastructure over the next 30 years: it is important that this is green.
So it was good that – almost unnoticed amid the shenanigans at the climate negotiations in the hideous Bella centre on Copenhagen's outskirts – mayors from 80 big cities held their own simultaneous, and much more productive, summit down the road.
One by one, they unveiled their achievements and plans; no fewer than 1,016 towns and cities across the US, for example, have agreed to meet the targets of the Kyoto protocol, which the government still rejects. Even New York plans to cut emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.
All this – and my two commuting cities – goes to show that, as our own dear Boris Johnson said in Copenhagen, we should "stop being quite so unremittingly negative and gloomy". Even though countries seem unwilling to save us, cities might.
Comments: 20
SIMPLY WARMIST PROPAGANDA - A DISGRACE - PUBLIC TRANSPORT WILL NOT SAVE ANYTHING - THE PLANET IS COOLING. IT ONLY WARMED BY 0.6 DEG C OVER THE WHOLE 20TH CENTURY AND WE ARE EXPECTED TO FORK OUR BILLIONS ON CHANGING FROM A SOUND CARBON-BASED ECONOMY TO RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE RENEWABLES....TO ABATE PLANT FOOD (harmless CO2). COST: £18 billion pa for forty years to the British people - alarmism is all pants promoted to keep the carbon traders and renewable energy salespeople in business at our expense! Boris Johnson is a disgrace to his party as this Lean guy is to the Telegraph.
The disconnect between all the people who actually took the time to plough through the entire CRU hack data and all the journalists and politicians who have not twigged that the jig is up on the whole eco-fraud continues to grow. The author of this article just sails on oblivious, stately as a galleon under sail, not noticing that the rats have already abandoned the sinking ship.
The most ridiculous quote from the most ridiculous leftist non-Tory in this ridiculous non-article: "All this – and my two commuting cities – goes to show that, as our own dear Boris Johnson said in Copenhagen, we should "stop being quite so unremittingly negative and gloomy". Even though countries seem unwilling to save us, cities might." Save us from what exactly???? The lies of the warmists or Al Gore's fairy stories of thermagedon? As 'environmental' correspondents, you, Moonbat and Heaven haven't a clue, Mr Lean. You should read the sense of Messrs Booker, Delingpole and Gerald Warner. WHY DOES THIS WARMIST AND THE BONKERS BORIS JOHNSON GET SUCH PROMINENCE IN THE TELEGRAPH??? OUTRAGEOUS!!
Billions were spent to bridge the Oresund Strait, just so you could write this bilge and then celebrate the closure of local industry. The taxi driver should have taken your money and thrown you into the Baltic, with any luck we would never have heard from you again.
Geoffrey Lean has pointed out something that needs to be watched, which is the pivotal role mayors, governors and other public officials and climate-change activists who aren't idealogues and extremists could play in this current climate-change debate. Lean drew the point that Copenhagen is a city, perhaps, the capital, not the nation Denmark that owns it, which was barely mentioned during the 11-day conference that turned out to be a farce of ecological, cataclysmic proportions as many nations and ideological groups battered and bantered over cabon emissions, carbon trade, carbon prints, greenhouse-gases and cost of climate-change remediations. But, the people who are really going to have far-more significant impact, are the mayors of the big cities like London, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, ect., that run and heavily burn fossil fuels. Emissions reductions are a major part of the climate- change remediation program. Mayors, and, sometimes, governors and provincial leaders have a bigger role to play in actual implementation. That's why London Mayor Boris Johnson--a true climate-change supporter attended Copenhagen summit, and shared his sincere and realistic ideas in a recent article in online Comment- Telegraph where I posted a detailed commentary. The near carbon-neutral trend and green-energy economy Copenhagen has exemplified (cited by Lean's article) could inspire other mayors and cities to follow the lead. But, first of all, coordination, synergy, cooperation and consultation; not confrontation of the kind that pervaded the Copenhagen climate-change conference, is what is needed in inter-city levels and collaboration. New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg--another climate- change supporter--attended the summit; along with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenagger, whose city of Los Angeles is one of the worst in the world when it comes to gaseous, automobile, exhaust-fumes and industrial-gas air pollution that emit not only carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases, but sulphur, methane and many other gases that cloud the atmosphere. The former actor and movie star advocated tough emission-control measures in his speech at the summit. People like London Mayor Boris Johnson and his global, foreign counterparts would play a huge direct impact on climate change, as they have already done or are still doing. Perhaps, they need to start having their own more realistic, meaningful, climate-change conference stripped of the showmanship, chaos, bickering, polarization and ideological extremism seen in the divisive US-sponsored climate-change conference in Copenhagen. Igonikon Jack, USA
Actually I found the article very interesting and I feel some sympathy for the author. I like clean air. But Mr Lean you have a habit of talking down to a readership that knows more than you do and doesn't like being brainwashed. Have a go at telling us why you still seem to believe in the Mann “Hockeystick” graph and much of the other discredited “scientific” nonsense.
"What Lean is referring to is how PLEASANT it is to live and move around in cities which are not slaves to motor traffic. " - Alan Goode Not just cities Alan, every sizeable town too. Clearly none of these bloggers has ever spent time in towns like Copenhagen, Gottingen Sweden, Amsterdam etc. Long before the Climategate nonsense, these people understood how important the quality of the environment is, and how towns and cities need to be freed up from traffic congestion, something the neanderthals here seem utterly blid to. Take a trip to Leiden in the Netherlands, or Gottingen, and marvel at the freedom from wall-to-wall traffic all around you. Or maybe you love being stuck in traffic gridlock? Seething with frustration, as your cardio-vascular system gets another dose of stress? Yep. Guess so. Oh, and UK cyclists please note: all the bikes on the Continent have this hi-tech modern development which stops your groin from getting soaked. It's called "MUDGUARDS". I never cease to despair at the number of people in my country who are so "desperate to conform" that they cycle in the wet without mudguards.
There are few who object to environmentally friendly cities. It has to do with the quality of human experience. You don't need global warming, cooling or stasis to promote that.
Copenhagen was the beginning of the end for this particular scam, but it will be back dressed up in different clothes shortly. My bet is on 'resource shortage' and a carbon tax to conserve energy; they will have their pound of flesh somehow. That still enables all the American bashers to climb on board, so no problem there then.
Two things missing here 1. How much did this transformation in malmo cost.We are told that renewable energy is a lot more expensive than gas, coal or nuclear. I wonder how much it costs the good people fo malmo to have their energy produced in this way 2. Why no mention of why the climate summit failed. I suspect governments are looking for an excuse not to sign any stupid expensive treaties now that the consensus on climate change appears not to be the consensus we were told it was. A little bit like the rising temperatures we were told to expect to coincide with the rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. We never really hear much from you on the falling temperatures that we have experienced over the last 9 years, when the computer models used by the IPCC all predicted increases. The consensus is falling apart as is the science you base your arguments on
Whats this more AGW propaganda? I didn't bother to read it. The warmtards should go live in the antarctic with the penguins and leave us be.
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