More than ever before the Copenhagen climate Change Summit drew interest and scrutiny on the political side of climate change and global warming problems. Now, all eyes are fixed firmly on the negotiators, and the lack of development at the summit has angered many who would brand those negotiators as the culprits, and has been reported in newspapers, on blogs, news websites and social networks.

There was nothing of the sort in 1997. The Kyoto Protocol was a matter of great press interest, but nothing of the level of scrutiny reached other forms of expression. But the move towards the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit has coincided with the rise in blogging, and now a whole host of angry activists – neither politicians nor journalists – are getting in on the act.

Putting pressure on both the politicians involved and the journalists expected to deliver interpretation of those actions to the world, blogs and social networks have allowed for an explosion of public opinion on the summit. One such example comes from Radiohead front-man Thom Yorke, who attended the summit and kept the Radiohead website in a state of frequent flux with his thoughts on the talks.

In a final flurry of anger, he wrote as follows:

“i guess this time of year is a time for serious reflection and i have been doing a lot of that since coming back from copenhagen.
you know what has stunned me coming back is the anger you can taste in the air about this, everybody i meet wants to talk about it.. everyone is angry and despairing and i have tried to remain positive when i talk to them about it.. it has perhaps awakened something in the back of the mind of sane people throughout the world who perhaps naively assumed that something positive would come of these talks.”

And anger has been the reaction for so many that it will now be hoped that the unsatisfactory deal done at Copenhagen will not be met by an equally disappointed lack of protest and backlash from those who oppose its weaknesses.Still in the immediate aftermath, it is difficult to tell. Let’s hope, though, that at a grass-roots level, something can be done.