You go for walks, maybe stretch out on an open couch, perhaps stand in long lines for a luke-warm bite to eat. You make numerous trips to the vending machines, munch on biscuits, chat with colleagues. Life in the fast lane of the COP15 Climate Conference in Copenhagen has slowed down to a crawl, and the waiting is most certainly the hardest part.

On the final day of the conference, the media — and everyone else — is looking forward to an outcome, any outcome of a two-week marathon that was supposed to lead to cuts in greenhouse gas emisions and a 2010 deadline for a legally binding treaty.

The world leaders gathered here and their negotiators are still working on the cuts, but that deadline is now out in the cold. What kind of deal will finally emerge? No one here, not the media at least, has an answer to that yet.

In the meantime, we work the phones, we watch twitter chatter, we hope for word and the prospect of finally putting this behind us.

In the Bella Center, site of the two-week session, a quieter tone has set in.

It’s quite the contrast to the earlier days when NGOs and environmental activists made their presence known with staged protests, costume stunts and undoubtedly the most popular event during the proceedings: the awarding of the Fossil of the Day, given to the country that did the least to help along the talks (or the most to hamper them). The grand winner was Canada, but we all knew that was coming after a near unbroken string of “victories” during the two weeks.

When you’re one of thousands of people trying to get a message out at once, you need an edge.

In Copenhagen during the COP15 conference a plethora of nongovernmental organizations, environmental groups, country delegations and even businesses have gone to sometimes unusual lengths to get their word out, and hopefully into the newspapers, or onto the Web and television.

The more adventurous — and humorous — the better your chance of catching a journalist’s eye.  Some have had members dressed up as aliens, holding up placards reading “Take me to your 2015 peak year”.  The aliens, brought to us by the environmental action group Avaaz,  have been a presence at the Bella Center for pretty much the whole conference to date.

Other dress-up stunts have included angels urging delegates not to kill the Kyoto Protocol, and Oxfam’s dancing polar bears with the line: Humans need a good deal.

Those who don’t have costumes have resorted to other means. A popular tactic this week has been lapel pins and cufflinks. Countdowntocopenhagen.org has passed out little black, red and white pins in the shape of a stopwatch with 10 minutes left on the clock. Its catchphrase? “Time for Climate Justice”.

The same group also had two “policewomen” greeting delegates at the entrance to the media center, saying: “Climate Crime Scene: Can You Help?”

The United Nations Foundation has also gotten the word out, literally. Its group Itsgettingpersonal.org came around to the media and handed us all decks of cards. Each card is emblazoned with “Stop Gambling With Our Future, Deal With Climate Change!” on one side and a quote on the face reflecting what people around the world will miss if climate change goes unchecked. One example is the eight of diamonds, which has a picture of a bunch of grapes over the quote, “I will miss French wine.” The six of clubs reads: “Going, going, gone. The Maldives are putting cash away to buy a new home, because they’ll be sunk soon.”

The COP15 conference on climate change will be a success even if no deal comes out of it, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Tuesday in Copenhagen.

“It depends on what your definition of a deal is,” Schwarzenegger told the media. “The important thing is to move the agenda forward.”

The governor is in Copenhagen to participate in a number of events on the sidelines of the main conference. Before meeting with the media, Schwarzenegger delivered a speech to an audience of mostly non-governmental organization members on California’s climate change efforts and the important of leading from the grassroots level.

“The important issue that I’m here to address is to not go and just rely solely on the federal government and national governments,” he said afterward. “All great movements start from grassroots level.”

California leads the United States in its legal mandate to cut greenhouse gases that warm the planet, from auto mileage standards adopted by the rest of the nation to green building codes.

Schwarzenegger said the leaders in Copenhagen needed to listen more to “ordinary folks” and when asked if he really expected Africa to listen to California he said California has already been a leader in the area, having formed partnerships with other states, Canadian provinces and Chinese provinces to affect change from the ground up.

Many negotiators and large industry groups at the COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen argue that climate action is a question of cost, but the price paid up front is worth the savings later, says the chief executive of a leading business think tank.

The cost often referred to in talks is regarding initial capital expenditures, or capex, but climate change solutions should be compared with operational costs, which would be decreased, and they should also be compared with the collateral of damage avoided cost benefits, Fiona Wain, chief executive officer of Environment Business Australia (EBA), told Reuters.com in an interview.

“If you haven’t got pollution, if you haven’t got waste, if you haven’t got greenhouse gas emissions, that’s a significant lessening of the drain on the public purse in all countries,” she said.

EBA formulates policy recommendations on how to have commercial activity without collateral damage to the environment, public health and security.

Wain is hopefull that Cop15 will produce a minimum of 25 percent cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 and longer term at least 80 percent by 2050.

“That may seem like a draconian imposition to some but it’s also a way to build new markets, new industries and new jobs and that is the approach we should be taking.”

The environment is already big business. A UK report estimated the global Low Carbon & Environmental Goods & Services market to be worth about $6 trillion in 2007/8.

Having an integrated clean technology strategy will be a big part of winning  business in the 21st century, a Coca-Cola executive told Reuters.com on Monday, and its investments in refrigeration will likely have the biggest impact on that strategy long-term.

The world’s biggest soft drinks maker has hooked up with Greenpeace on an initiative to eliminate hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) — greenhouse gases with a high warming effect — from its refrigeration and cooling equipment by 2015, said Jeff Seabright, Coke’s vice president for Environment & Water Resources.

“We have about 10 million pieces of equipment that run in 200 countries around the world every day, and although we’re only 1 percent of the commercial refrigeration market we have an opportunity to really lead on this,” he said.

Coke is also investing indirectly to keep ahead of the curve on new frontier technologies.

Seabright said Coke has around $70 million in two clean tech venture capital funds, DJF Element and Rockport Capital and that, in addition to expecting better than market rate returns, such investments give it a front-row seat for the latest technologies.

“We’ve clearly identified sustainable not as a fad or as sort of a nice to-do; this is going to define what it means to win in the world of business in the 21st century,” he said. “Understanding things like sustainable agriculture, understanding what’s happening with water stress around the world in part as a product of climate-induced stress, understanding how to manage energy inputs and impacts on your business. These things are today big parts of our cost structure, a big part of our footprint and increasingly are going to a big part of what it’s going to take to win as a business.”

Water, packaging and energy and climate change are the three critical components of Coke’s environmental sustainability, Seabright said. One area it is now actively exploring is sustainable agriculture.

Demonstrators came out in force early Saturday morning as the sun broke through the clouds that have blanketed Copenhagen during the first week of COP15.  A huge march, with about 60,000 protesters expected, is planned for later in the day but smaller rallies are already under way as groups make their way to the main event — the march to the Bella Center, host of the COP15 global climate conference.

Here are some video clips from one march, where protesters held aloft banners reading “Demand Climate Justice” and “Face Facts, Make Pacts”. They want global leaders gathering in Copenhagen to commit to eliminating or at the very least radically reducing CO2 greenhouse gas emissions.

In a country where income taxes can run as high as 60 percent and the word most used to describe almost everything is “expensive”, it’s little wonder the locals are eager to pocket a few extra Danish kroner during the COP15 Copenhagen climate conference.

And if the extra money comes in under the table, even better.

With the hotels and hostels booked solid, some Danes have opened their homes to some of the 34,000 delegates who were tardy in their bookings.

A waiter told me that he and his roommate had rented out their two-bedroom apartment for the two-week duration of the conference for a whopping $5,000. He didn’t want his name used, of course. That money will not make it into the country’s coffers.

Not everyone has hit the COP15 jackpot, though. A taxi driver told my colleague they have been hit hard by the conference. You would think that 34,000 guests to the city would need a ride or two. So did the cabbies until the Danish government stepped in and provided delegates with free shuttle buses and travel passes. Many delegates are from NGOs, and a good number are students. For many, a penny saved is a penny more for lodgings and eating. For the city’s frustrated cabbies, it’s no fare.

The debate over lowering greenhouse gas emissions is sometimes depicted as a fight between environmental groups concerned over the health of the planet and businesses concerned about economic growth and bottom-line erosion.

Occasionally, though, there is a meeting of like minds between the two.

The WWF has a program in which it partners with companies to target emissions reductions. The Climate Savers program is an agreement between the WWF and its partner companies to lay out targets and set out projects to meet those goals.

“We want to show that doing business and reducing emissions go hand in hand,” said Matthew Banks, a senior program officer at the WWF and an economist.

The program, started in 1999, is aimed at getting companies to reduce their carbon footprint. Twenty-three companies have signed on, including Coca-Cola, Hewlett-Packard, Nike and JohnsonDiversey. The companies negotiate targets and projects to reach those targets with the WWF and independent experts. Each contract is tailored to the company’s specific circumstances  and progress is verified by an outside experts like ecofys.

Hewlett-Packard,  for instance, has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 6 million tonnes below 2005 levels by 2010.  Japanese transportation company Sagawa aims to reduce its gross CO2 emissions by 6 percent by 2012 compared with 2002.

The WWF is trying to get companies to stretch those targets.

Some businesses in the United States will have to reinvent themselves as the Obama administration moves to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but they’ll be  better off in the long run, Pedro Chidichimo, president of JohnsonDiversey EMA, told Reuters.com on Thursday.

Despite the inevitable short-term pain, Chidichimo said that carbon footprint reductions simply have good bottom-line implications for businesses.

“Of course there are a lot of investments that need to be done, not only financial investments but resources and capabilities investments that need to be done to do that but this will generate significant bottom-line improvement for the business landscape,” he said.

The Environment Protection Agency (EPA)  ruled on Monday that greenhouse gases endanger human health, a move that will allow it to regulate planet-warming gases even without legislation in Congress.

Reinvention will be key for some companies as they move to comply with new standards and regulations, said Chidichimo, who spoke to Reuters.com at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Climate Business Action Day event on the sidelines of the COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen.

“In history you’ve seen many reinventions of industries,” he said. “I think we are at one of those breakthrough times in humanity where some industries need to be redefined totally and need to take other technologies as a base to drive a different business model.”

Wisconsin-based JohnsonDiversey specializes in cleaning and hygiene solutions for commercial customers. The unlisted company has committed to reducing emissions from its global operations to 8 percent below 2003 levels by December 31, 2013. It said this will result in an estimated cumulative CO2 reduction of 89,000 tonnes by 2013.

In the most heated protest of these early days at COP15 in Copenhagen, African representatives accused the political leaders of the developed world of hijacking the conference to the detriment of developing nations.

The marchers said the process of the talks had been manipulated by the developed world’s political leaders to impose on Africans a deal that won’t benefit them.

Augustine Njmanshi, of Christian Aid, said Africans were suffering and would “not die in silence.”

He added: “$10 billion is not enough to buy the coffins to bury us with.”