Quoted in The Telegraph, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen’s biggest limousine company, said her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the “summit to save the world”, she will have 200. The airport has as many as 140 extra private jets (plus increased commercial traffic) during the peak period alone, so far over its airplane parking capacity that the planes fly off, empty of passengers, to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their leaders.
Elsewhere, many of the same folks pushing for some–any–binding agreement on climate change argue that “green technology is the answer” and that such an agreement will push those same “green technologies” and create a boom in employment worldwide. While technology is indeed the answer to most of the globe’s ills, as it has been for milennia, if the folks in Copenhagen this week wish to be seen as true leaders they might try leading by example. Currently available technology could easily have web-linked the participants in a virtual conference, saved fuel for limos and jets, and saved taxpayer funds for every country involved.
The difference between a leader and a tyrant? The former never says “do as I say, not as I do.”
This post originally ran on Speakout for America on December 13, 2009
