For about 2 weeks, thousands of official delegates attended the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. In addition, thousands of protesters and law enforcement officers were active in the streets, often at odds with each other. The confrontation between these two groups was sad to view, as both sides are on the same side of history. Their primary goal was to get the governments of the world to create a plan for a sustainable atmosphere. Yet, minimal agreement was reached. Watching from afar via television, the conference appeared to resemble organized chaos more than a high-level, enlightened, humanitarian consideration of our global climate change crisis. It was clear that many delegates were only concerned with the here and now, not with the future of the Earth's biosphere and humankind. According to Lester Brown, the human reasons for concern about climate change varied widely for the 193 national delegations who gathered in Copenhagen. Delegates from low-lying island countries were principally concerned about rising sea levels. For countries in Southern Europe, climate change means less rainfall and more drought. For countries of East Asia and the Caribbean, more powerful storms and storm surges are of growing concern. The climate change conference was about all these things and more. In a more fundamental sense, it was about food and water security for a population still growing at 80,000,000 people per year. It should have been, about human overpopulation, the single most important driving force responsible for all of our environmental concerns. The archaic and outdated format of this meeting often seemed like an exercise in bargaining, trading, compromises, and deal making. More world leaders attended this meeting than any meeting since the formation of the United Nations. Anyone who has ever organized or attended a large meeting knows that putting thousands of delegates in a conference room, with each delegate trying to promote his or her own agenda, is not the best way to organize and manage such a meeting. A much better approach would have been to have a significant portion of the work completed before arrival, with common ground already established between groups with common concerns. This usually requires organizational skills and coordination of efforts on behalf of these countries so that maximal impact can be achieved. When the delegations arrived at the meeting, they should already have had the relevant accurate data, knowledge, and policy positions on the major and Water Air Soil Pollut (2010) 207:1–3 DOI 10.1007/s11270-010-0336-x