Copenhagen, Day 6

From Tuesday in Copenhagen…

A stray Polar Bear on the streets of Copenhagen

Inside, temperature and stasis are not a problem; things are simply slower. This is in part because more of the 15,000 people in the building now know each other than did so last week; they have what physicists would call an increased cross-section of interaction. Though such interactions may speed the transmission of information through the halls by way of leak, chat and argument, they slow down physical movement. If you’re not greeting one of your friends, you’re bumping into someone who has stopped to greet one of hers.

There were also, thanks to one of the NGOs, some ents in the building today—or at least walking trees, which comes to the same thing. Apparently there were also many Polar Bears around the building.

The main obstacle, though, is simply more bodies.

And soon things could get more crowded still. Ominous new metal detectors and X-ray machines have turned up at the doors of the media centre. They are not yet operational, but they foreshadow a future in which access to the halls where delegates are meeting, and the atria surrounding and connecting those halls, is curtailed, and non-delegates are penned up more tightly. Its hard not to feel that even in this vast building, stir-craziness beckons.

The Pulse is providing readers with a daily snippet of The Economist’s correspondent diary. You can find past updates from the conference diary here. Please visit The Economist for the full text of the diary and extended coverage of the conference.