COP15: Disdain for the Tree of Life

It was an article in The Copenhagen Post which first perked my interest in the big Un's Climate Change Conference (COP15).

When I see Beauty and merry-making banned I get suspicious. When I see the spirit of Puritanism and Piety rising like an angry flood across the green land and seeping like an acid beneath the doors of homes and hearts my senses quicken and a stiff ridge rises along the trunk of my spine, traveling the branches of my brain.

"[Christmas] is a religious holiday that has no place at a United Nations function, according to the Foreign Ministry's Svend Olling...." ("Christmas trees banned for climate summit," The Copenhagen Post, 4 Dec. 2009).

"'We have to remember that this is a UN conference and, as the centre then becomes UN territory, there can be no Christmas trees in the decor, because the UN wishes to maintain neutrality,' said Olling" ("Christmas trees").


Jadis, Scrooge, the Grinch, and Puritans don't like Christmas trees either. They prefer cold stone, frozen streams, continual Fimbulvetr, and never having to see evergreen life which defies winter's breath. They are afraid of Spring's warm breath; and large powerful men with wise white beards who keep lists, wear royal crimson, and bring gifts and drop coal upon those who need warming of their constricted hearts. They are afraid of an old one-eyed man sustained upon wine with his eight-legged steed, or his modern team of eight leaping and jingling reindeer.

COP15 claims to be a religious neutral zone, but the banning of decorated and glowing evergreens and observance of Christmas is a highly religious and fanatical act. The hatred of Christmas is rarely an atheist hatred, but always a religious fanatic hatred.


COP15 has very effectively displayed a fear, not only of The Great Flood, but also of The Live Tree. Within the Great White Stone Circle ("No Man's Land") there is barely a live twig across the desert. The few trees are in winter's sleep, and those planted previous to the great gathering are looked upon as inferior due to the fact that they were planted in a time when man believed nature had a pattern and could be guided by pattern.


The dislike of The Live Tree is also evident in the little movie produced for the opening ceremony, "Please help the world," in which the child instinctively clings to the lone and dead tree for protection from The Great Flood swirling beneath her.


The child-actor knows to cling to the tree, knows it should represent shelter from the storm, but in a windswept world where one has lost their Faith (the teddy bear) to the gaping chasm, and The Live Tree is reduced to a skeleton of dry kindling, there is no savior, no refuge from the storm. There is only crucifixion.

The world of COP15 is not one of benevolence or of hope, but of apocalypse, fear, and dark ignorance. It is a world of Deep Ecology, the deep ecology of hell and its laughing lies.

The world will look and feel exactly as the landscaping and the film depict it if the Frost Giants of Copenhagen have their way. They are pulling our tails.

Rather than pushing against the weight of the good people of the world, trying to get them into the dark barn, they are pulling tails with fear in order to get us to pull away from the discomfort and into the barn -- the very place we don't want to go.

The Live Tree represents all that this new group of religious fanatics cannot stand: Life, Knowledge, Protection, Birth, Connection to Heaven, Connection to Hell, Sacrifice, and Resurrection.


The Live Tree, the Christmas Tree is one of the most universal, most religiously neutral symbols inherited by man. Coupled with fire or light it is even more universal. COP15 wants this and ALL myth, ALL religions of the past desiccated. The only way to achieve this goal of obliterating these inherited "religious" symbols is to obliterate the blood in which these beliefs are stored.

Those who believe they will gain profit or save the earth by signing to the treaty will be signing in blood -- the blood of innocents, the blood of the children in their country.

Those who refrain their hand from signing the treaty will be those who have tasted of the fruit of knowledge, who desire the fruit of life, who hold to the ties of the wise elders, the courage of mythic heroes, and the divine patterns instilled in the earth upon which they know and love. Those who do not sign will stand with solid faces against the storm and they will shelter under The Great Tree. Those who do not sign will be like living trees spreading their branches over the children of their land.


images from top to bottom: Jesse Tree, Saint-Quentin Basilica, Aisne, France;
Woman With Flowers, Iran; Olive Tree; Flag of Iroquois Confederacy; detail of Crucifixion, Antonello da Messina; Yggdrasil, Oluf Olufsen Bagge, Prose Edda (1847); Happy Christmas, Viggo Johansen

COP15: Primordial Flood Fear

Those gathered in Denmark for the COP15 are displaying an inordinate fear of water and an unhealthy dislike of foliage and fire.

Perhaps, the Danes have an ingrained fear of water due to their age-old battle against it. They've been holding it back for centuries, building dykes and draining it with their spectacular windmills. It's in their blood. Tulip speculating is in their blood too, and we remember that with sidewise fondness and bywords of derision.

The dark and damp depths of the Great Flood run strong throughout COP15. It is a bit wet and wintery in Copenhagen this time of year. The duck ponds in the Great White Circle around Bella Center welcome with more water as the delegates enter.

Then there is the horror flick "Please help the world," in which the children flee from the rain storm into the dark confines of their tall and aesthetically devoid apartments where the rain looms against the windows as they watch televisions which show the horrors of global warming. Then, after an evening of healthy fear from the screen get tucked in for a nightmare.

And again, that nasty water appears. The little girl clings to a dead tree (again, that dislike of healthy trees) while the water rages inland and beneath her little feet.

Then, there are the displays of melting glaciers and the talk of rising sea levels. Yet in all this fear of water and cold grayness, there seems to be no light or fire. How can the water be rising if there is no light, warmth, or fire? Where is the sun in this land? Perhaps, the sun must be avoided because it would bring up the idea that there are other causes of global warming outside of mankind.

And fire, it must not be spoken of amongst those of cold heart. They may melt. Fire is absolute and dangerous. It warms and brightens. Fire takes the edge off of damp souls and warms us enough to be limber for love and joy.

COP15 is a grand display of those afraid of the dark and cold, the flood and the reasons for it hidden in the shadows of their nightmares, haunting them, becoming larger than life. The Flood, a deep memory, something to face, something to overcome.

Until those gathered at COP15 can grasp the branches of a live tree, find a tall mountain, and grasp more securely to their old faith and fidelity they will not survive the watery apocalypse they so fear. Nor will they survive the fiery one they dare not speak of.

And for, heaven's sake when will the preachers of the world stop using children as an emotional vehicle? When will we grow up?

image: Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt

The Breathe of Life

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being (Genesis 2:7)

And this is the moment carbon dioxide (CO2) is first expelled into the perfect earth, the moment the glaciers begin melting and polar bears begin floating on stray islands of ice.

There is a bit of folk wisdom that says talking to a plant will make it grow faster. Most likely, it is not so much the vibrations of speech which the plant loves, but the breathe which contains CO2, not to mention one who talks to a plant is also attentive to its needs.

But it has been agreed upon by supposedly educated and well-meaning adults in positions of power that CO2 is now a toxin which must be condemned.

It is difficult for me to comprehend the logic. How is it that the world must unite to protect plant and animal life from irresponsible human encroachment and use, but also claim that the very thing plants rely on for energy is now dangerous?

If plants do not get enough light, water, or CO2 they don't grow. And if plants don't grow animals die. Polar bears will die without herbivores to chew on, not to mention that plants expel oxygen as a "waste" product, which is what humans and animals breathe.

Is it possible that what is really meant by lowering CO2 emissions is the death of all that breathes?

There does seem to be an arrogance forming in the ponds of "No Man's Land," in the Great White Circle around Bella Center in Copenhagen where the big UN is meeting for the Climate Change Conference (COP15).

It seems, judging from the three plastic-lined ponds in the Great White Circle of rocks, rocks, and more rocks at Bella Center's entrance that the breathe of life will only be blowing upon the pond that symbolizes those chosen few meeting inside and the air they will be huffing.

There are three lonely ponds erected in the landscape. One pond is full of water and leaves which are in various stages of decay, which most likely represents the humous pile of history and lives used as compost for the great one's gardens.

There is another plastic-lined pool which has a cloud made of 1800 metres of recycled water spewing forth into it. This represents the daily Dane (Flemming Rafn Thomsen, Head of Design, SLA).

And then there is the special pond, full of white chalk stones, which will be the one that catches the wind, the spirit of inspiration, causing its surface to froth, and turn "milky."

I suppose, that those not part of the compost pond may be symbolized by the Great White Circle of rocks.

It is not clear as to how those gathered at COP15 will get the breathe of life/inspiration blown upon them if no religion is allowed. Perhaps, there is a new pantheon of gods being developed, from which the breathe will be gotten. Perhaps, they think to make themselves gods and demi-gods, giving birth to a new dawn, a new Olympus, an new order.

Vanity of vanities...All is vanity