CEI’s William Yeatman is back from a rockin good time in Kyopenhagen:

The UNFCCC classifies participants to the COP-15 three ways: observers, media and negotiators. Of the three, observers are by far the largest group, and they mostly fit a similar profile. They are younger than 30, they work in the nonprofit sector in the United States or Western Europe, and they passionately believe the world needs to fight global warming.
Yet dedication to the cause isn’t the only reason they traveled to Copenhagen. They also came for the vibe.
Concerts are constant in the huge temporary soundstage erected in city square. At the end of the first week, seemingly everyone was excited for the “NGO Party” on Saturday at Vega, Copenhagen’s foremost discotheque. The party flier screamed in bold, “Free Entrance/Conference Badge Required!” According to the hash peddlers in Christiantown, an anything-goes commune in the northern part of the city, business has been brisk during the Copenhagen conference. . . .
It is also true that this green corps isn’t interested much in intellectual consistency. Outside the COP-15 Saturday night, a vigil marked the end of a march from the Danish Parliament building. The crowd cheered when a British rocker called for a “revolution,” and it cheered five minutes later when an Indian academic urged support for China’s rejection of emissions targets. These are mutually exclusive exhortations, mind you.
Generation green doesn’t recognize the trade-offs of costs and benefits. Indeed, they don’t seem to recognize costs at all. This is likely the fault of politicians in Western countries. Consider President Obama, who refuses to acknowledge that his renewable-energy policies are expensive energy policies, for the simple reason that renewable energy costs more than conventional energy. Instead, he trumpets the creation of green jobs. The president surely knows better, so he is pretending that his energy policies are all gain and no pain. The problem is that the youth are listening, and they believe him.
Perhaps the biggest indictment of the young idealists who descended upon Denmark is the mere fact that they came. After all, world leaders conceded that COP-15 would be a failure a month before it even started. . . . As such, thousands of young people spewed untold tons of greenhouse gases flying to and living in Copenhagen for a pointless climate conference. The only lasting impact of COP-15 will be its huge carbon footprint! By participating in the Copenhagen climate confab, generation green exhibits the same sort of mindless consumption that it came to protest.