Bruce Bawer in Copenhagen...

Pajamas Media has sent Bruce Bawer to Copenhagen to cover the climate party....they couldn't have picked a better journalist!

One word about Copenhagen in December: brrrr. You wouldn’t necessarily consider it the ideal place to try to put over the message that the planet’s heating up. (There’s a reason why there are songs about April in Paris, autumn in New York, and Memphis in June, but not Copenhagen in December.) Of all people, moreover, you’d think Scandinavians would welcome toastier temperatures. But no – they’re more hyped up about global warming than anybody else. Why? One reason is that they, more than the rest of us, tend to take whatever the UN says on faith. Another is that this spare-a-square mentality brings out the thin-lipped, absurdly self-denying Lutheran killjoy preacher in all of them (think of the bishop stepfather in Fanny and Alexander) and taps into their latent guilt over being well-off and over embracing American-type lifestyles that are alien to their grandparents’ simpler, purer, more frugal ways. Who’s been using up all the toilet paper? Who left this light on? It’s like an oven in here! Talk about a red-blooded Scandinavian’s idea of a good (i.e., virtuous) time! Alas and alack, the Danes, like the Norwegians I live among, are cursed by the so-called Jante Law — a deep-seated mentality, instilled from infancy, which teaches them to feel unworthy of just about anything, to feel guilty about even the most modest pleasure or luxury, and to pour money into charities even if they know the money will end up paying for some Third World dictator’s eighteenth limo. The Jante Law is utterly at odds with the American belief in an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and it’s a natural foundation for the endless riot of petty, humorless guilt-tripping that is a key element of the global-warming cult.

Which is not to deny that this guilt-tripping has taken strong root in the U.S., too. For heaven’s sake, when somebody like Oprah (and I saw this just a couple of weeks ago) actually stands there on her show urging us, with a straight face, to use fewer paper towels in the kitchen, we should break down in helpless laughter at the idea that this woman who owns several lavish houses and travels by private jet should dare to lecture us so arrogantly. Just the other day, Mark Steyn noted that Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the UN Star Chamber for global warming), who has called for “hefty aviation taxes … to deter people from flying,” himself flew at least 443,000 miles on alleged IPCC business during a recent 19-month period. No one with any sense is really surprised by such things — only by the fact that these people continue to be taken seriously. To my mind, the incomparable level of hypocrisy on the part of all the major players in this operation, from Al Gore on down, was always enough to make it obvious that the whole thing was a scam — a scam perpetrated by a cultural, media, and academic elite on people whom they considered their inferiors, and a scam entirely at odds with the premises of American democracy. Of course there was no hard proof. Climategate has provided it.

And yet, as I say, people are still buying it. So it is that while wandering around downtown Copenhagen I come to a square called Nytorv in which I encounter a life-size polar bear made out of ice and provided courtesy of the WWF and Panasonic. It’s a big draw. Everybody’s taking pictures. The idea is that over the course of the climate conference the bear will gradually melt, like Frosty the Snowman, thus making a dramatic statement about global warming. Unfortunately, it’s freezing cold here. (Then again, I have no doubt that they’ve got this thing rigged to melt, no matter what the air temperature.) From Nytorv it’s on to City Hall Square, where twenty or so kids are pedaling away at stationary bicycles that have been set up in a semicircle facing a big Christmas tree — the idea being that the kids’ cycling is powering the twinkling lights of the tree. A couple of dozen other kids are eagerly waiting to take their places. I’ve got to admit, it’s a brilliant idea to get us all off the grid: restore child labor!

And so, eventually, back to my hotel — where in the elevator I find myself face to face with a notice telling me that it belongs to “the world’s first CO2-neutral hotel chain.” Another notice invites hotel guests to participate in an event on December 12, when, at 7 p.m., the entire city of Copenhagen will turn off its lights for an hour — “Earth Hour.” “Turn off the lights in your room and come down to the lounge,” the sign implores. “We’ll serve you a CO2-neutral beer in the candlelight.” It actually sounds cozy: who doesn’t like a beer in a candlelit bar? But in the name of all that’s holy, is this really our future: an endless series of inane, empty gestures posturing as meaningful action on behalf of a legitimate cause — perhaps coupled, if the Climate Mafia gets its way, with worldwide legislation that uses its con as an excuse to obliterate, for all but a privileged few, what in America are known as constitutional liberties?