Editor’s note: So far, I’ve been quiet on the Copenhagen Climate Conference. This doesn’t mean I’m not interested, or don’t have thoughts… rather, there’s so much information coming directly from Denmark that I’d rather let those on the ground do the talking for now. Rolf Nordstrom, the executive director of the Great Plains Institute, is one of those people in Copenhagen, and he generously provided this post for us…

I arrived in Copenhagen on Monday afternoon and am still suffering a little jet lag, but I am awake enough to give you a glimpse of what the climate change conference taking place here these next two weeks looks and feels like, and how you might expect it to impact your life.

First, to give you a sense of scale, I want you to imagine that the vast Mall of America is filled not with shops of every kind, but with hundreds of booths from different organizations, temporary offices for delegates from 192 countries, vast meeting rooms set up with microphones and video screens, cafes, the mother of all cloak rooms, huge banks of computer stations (many with Skype and video capability built in), and the whole place teaming with people.

To get into this global “town hall” meeting, I waited in line with hundreds of others in order to get my picture taken and go through several security check points. Indeed, the elaborate airport-like security system rivals any major airline hub, complete with scanners and sniffing dogs. And all this only hints at the scale of this gathering.

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