It finally happened. I didn’t get into the Bella Center at all today. I knew it was just a matter of time. But something happened today at the conference center, and I’m not exactly sure what.

I woke up this morning, and we walked through the snow to the metro center, but it said that the Bella Center station was closed... because of “crowd control.” Yeah, right. Then later in the day, it said that there was a demonstration going on. Then they completely shut off all NGO (non governmental organization) access for the rest of the day and no NGOs at all are allowed tomorrow and Friday. The UN is doing an awesome job putting a binding cap on people. I wish I could say the same about carbon emissions.

 So, apparently, people were angry about not being able to get in, and even some of the negotiators who were supposed to be, you know, negotiating couldn’t get in. So then the police got violent, using tear gas and batons to keep people out.

 A few youth were able to get inside, however.  The US youth were able to deliver a “be a strong leader” postcard to Senator Kerry. And a small group of youth from all over the world sat down in a circle in the middle of the hallway and said they would not leave until a fair, ambitious, and legally binding treaty is made. Despite being violently dragged away at one point, a group of 19 sat there for over 8 hours (it’s 2:00am here) until Security threatened to kick out all of civil society (everyone who’s not the government) if they didn’t leave.

 They sat there on behalf of (and started reading all the names of) 11 million people from across the globe demanding that our leaders come up with a treaty that benefits our future.

I wanted more than anything to be there with them, and if the center wasn’t closed, I would’ve made the trek through the freezing wind and snow to get there. I I had to settle with watching a live stream of the sit-in. You can hear all about it on Whit Jones’ live blog: itsgettinghotinhere.org.

The youth movement stood up, er, sat down and made their voices heard. This is exactly what needs to happen. And we can only hope the negotiators will listen to them when they arrive at the conference center tomorrow morning.

So meanwhile, while this brilliant activism was going on inside the Bella Center, I was over in the part of town known as Kongens Nytorv (Danish for King’s house or something like that.) I was attending an event for the support of REDD, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. Basically, what is does is it makes a tree worth more alive than dead. How it works is Developed countries (US, for example) would pay rainforest nations that would otherwise get money from deforestation to not cut down their trees. They would pay as much or even more than what the nations would make from the loggers, and the rainforest nations get to keep their forests. It’s a win-win-win-win. The only people negatively affected are the illegal loggers who don’t get their fat paycheck.

REDD is being talked about in the negotiations right now. And people are saying that it could be the only good thing that comes out of this conference.

Our world leaders pretty much have 2 days to save this planet for this and every generation. And if they don’t do a good enough job, the youth of this planet will be on their backs holding them accountable for their actions. We are not going to settle with anything less than a fair, ambitious, and binding (those are the buzz words, if you haven’t figured out already) treaty.

So who’s ready?