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 would earnestly have committed to a concept hatched by a cabal of ardent socialists. Equally fascinating is the almost universal reluctance to acknowledge the organizational disaster that has ensued. -Peter Foster, Financial Post, 8 June 2012
India's concern over European Union (EU) law to tax air carriers for carbon emissions may find an echo at the Rio Conference on sustainable development, with environment ministry calling it an important issue for discussion. There is growing apprehension that the developed world's stress on environmental dimension of development would hurt the developing countries that cannot meet the stiff targets without compromising on its industrial growth. India prefers focus on themes like poverty eradication, preserving livelihoods and access to services for poor. In contrast, the developed world wants a focus on environmental dimension by sidelining social and economic issues. --Subodh Ghildiyal, The Times of India, 7 June 2012
French President Francois Hollande warned on Friday that a major international summit to be held this month in Brazil aimed at breaking years of deadlock on pressing environmental issues may fail. Hollande, who will attend the summit, said there was a "risk of division between developed countries, emerging countries, poor countries, the risk of failure because there may be other pressing matters. --AFP, 8 June 2012
The Rio+ 20 Earth summit could collapse after countries failed to agree on acceptable language just two weeks before 120 world leaders arrive at the biggest UN summit ever organised, WWF warned on Wednesday. An extra week given over to the UN's preparatory negotiations in New York fell into disarray over the weekend as talks aimed to bring countries together to set a new path for sustainable development splintered into 19 separate dialogues with major internal disagreements on the processes to be followed. --John Vidal, The Guardian, 6 June 2012
With Japan focused on the twin problems of energy supply and fiscal reform, it has quietly stepped back from its earlier pledges on the environment. --Mari Iwata, The Wall Street Journal, 7 June 2012
The BBC reports that the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) is warning of a whole new set of ‘tipping points’ being reached unless “population growth” and “unsustainable consumption” are tackled at an international level. Translation: there are simply too many of you, and you’ve all got too much stuff. UNEP is calling for tough new international agreements to tackle the crisis, arguing – in perfect Alice in Wonderland fashion – that this has already failed hundreds of times, so we should be trying it again, just more so. Isn’t that just fantastic “Mad Hatter” reasoning? We’ve had more than seven hundred international agreements on environmental protection and apparently things are still getting worse. So apparently the problem is that we don’t have enough of them, we need more international agreements, and they need to be stricter. --Haunting the Library, 6 June 2012
