Welcome to Cop-enhagen

Police in riot gear brandishing pepper-spray. Protesters arrested without provocation. Handcuffed bodies sitting on cold concrete streets. Physical abuse on caged human beings. Deliberate humiliation and the denial of so-called “basic rights.”

These are the kinds of mementos thousands of eco-activists will take home after vigorously protesting the failed Cop-enhagen talks on what I like to call climate chaos. As I read the first-hand account of police abuses by Tomas Lundström, I couldn’t help but think of the similarities between his experience and my experience protesting the Iraq war in New York City. If anything, reading his and other stories from the protests just reinforced my view that all police–whether they are notorious NYPD officers or seemingly civilized Danes–will use uninhibited violence to protect the established order if given the opportunity and authorization to do so. Furthermore, they will engage in this brutality even if the order they strive to protect is ultimately detrimental to their own self interest.

Compared to the ineffective bureaucrats representing almost 200 governments that wasted precious human-energy, finances and environmental resources at the Bella Centre, it was the activists demanding serious responses to the ecological threats facing the globe and all its residents that were indirectly acting in even the police’s best interests. Despite the illusion of power, these men and women in their modern-day armor will struggle, suffer and die like any other living creature who does not have access to clean water and unpolluted air. Despite their state-backed violence, they are not immune from the effects of deforestation, disastrous changes in weather, lost species and rising seas.

And yet, there the police were brutalizing those who are right in their struggle. There they were trading their lives and the lives of their descendants to protect a set of meetings that at best produced watered-down results and at worst was nothing more than a spectacular public failure. Talk about a comedy of errors. Unfortunately, for too many of us–human and nonhuman alike–it is the planet that will no doubt have the last laugh.

More photos from Cop-enhagen by The Guardian. Thanks especially to Jonas for the heads up on his brother’s article.

Tags: creation, current events, police, violence