Rio+20 "... a farce, even if everybody keeps a straight face"
Peter Foster:
The Rio+20 Earth Summit on Sustainable Development, which starts in two weeks, will be a farce, even if everybody keeps a straight face. The grand UN-based system conceived to co-ordinate the activities of all mankind has proved utterly unsustainable, a dysfunctional mess that generates nothing but endless meetings, agendas and reports.
That sustainable development would inevitably collapse under its own contradictions was inevitable. What is fascinating is why every country on Earth — including Canada — would earnestly have committed to a concept hatched by a cabal of ardent socialists. ....
... Canada’s “national submission” to the Rio conference is yet another model of bureaucratic pretension and political hypocrisy, in which an ostensibly right-wing government calls for more comprehensive and effective progress toward the socialist dreams of Brundtland and Rio ’92. ...
In generating "nothing but endless meetings, agendas and reports" the UN demonstrates that it has sustainability down to an art.
ReplyDeleteRemind me again why we spend 5 cents on this corrupt organization?
I am disappointed that Canada would even attend this kind of BS gathering.
ReplyDeleteRob C
I agree. We dropped out of Kyoto, the main product of Rio, so we'd be consistent if we had nothing to do with Rio +20.
ReplyDelete"... bureaucratic pretension and political hypocrisy" is a good description of our position.
The best face one can put on it is that it's part of a smoke and mirrors approach the Conservatives have adopted to look green while doing nothing substantive.
For a different, irreverent, darkly comic, take on the Earth Summit, read MAKING A KILLING, recently republished to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, then billed as the… err… 'meeting to end all meetings'. The whole cast of characters is there, from elephant-hunting Kings to corporate chieftains on the green make; governments pandering to big business; conservation bigwigs preaching the cause of protecting wildlife by hunting, skinning and trading it. You can read more about it here: http://www.iridescent-publishing.com
ReplyDeleteOh, and this book is unashamedly pro-conservation, not in the Flat Earth, Denier camp…
This situation is no longer deniable. During my lifetime, many have understood the Global Predicament we are facing now, but only a few 'voices in the wilderness' were willing to speak out loudly and clearly about what everyone can see. It is not a pretty sight. The human community has precipitated a planetary emergency that only humankind is capable of undoing. The present 'Unsustainable Path' has to be abandoned in favor of a "road less travelled by". It is late; there is no time left to waste. Perhaps now we will gather our remarkably abundant, distinctly human resources and respond ably to the daunting, human-induced, global challenges before us, the ones that threaten life as we know it and the integrity of Earth as a fit place for human habitation. Many voices, many more voices are needed for making necessary changes.
ReplyDelete