With two months left before leaders assemble for the UN’s Rio de Janeiro Summit, prospects for a radical fix of the planet’s worsening environmental ills and poverty seem remote.
Around 100 heads of states and governments are expected in Rio for the June 20-22 conference on sustainable development.
It takes place 40 years after the first big global environment meeting and 20 years after the near-legendary Earth Summit, where the United Nations set up two forums to combat climate change and biodiversity loss.
That initiative nailed environment firmly to the top of the world’s political agenda.
Yet two decades later, the problems are worse than ever.
Indeed, many experts gloomily say mankind is destroying his future by the reckless drive for prosperity today.
Scientists at a pre-Rio conference in London last month said the UN’s goal, enshrined less than 18 months ago, of limiting global warming to 2°C is already out of reach.
“We have to realise that we are looking at a loss of biodiversity that is unprecedented in the last 65 million years. We are clearly entering the (planet’s) sixth mass extinction,” said Bob Watson, former head of the UN’s climate panel and chief advisor to Britain’s environment ministry.
The summit faces a triple task of tackling this crisis, eradicating entrenched poverty and placing growth onto a sustainable path, with measures to stimulate the green economy.
But − in contrast to 1992 – no one is expecting a horizon-sweeping master plan.
Just out of curiosity, are these people completely unaware of the concept of “irony”? If they’d spent a fraction of the money thrown away trying to “prove” AGW on practical poverty-reducing plans, the world would be a far better place.
Apparently prosperity is reserved for warmists.
Unfortunately increasing prosperity in poverty stricken regions will only cause more poverty. You can only increase it by so much before it becomes unsustainable. Best let them get there by themselves, clientelism didn’t work the last 5 decades so why keep on trying?
RE: “no one is expecting a horizon-sweeping master plan.”
Good news. A comprehensive plan will include a fleet of trucks lined up to cart the cash away when they blow the safe open.
Does the GSA help them plan these boondoggles?
“Unprecidented” “loss of biodiversity?” “Mass extinctions?” I’m really tired of this whine with nothing to support it. If so many species are going extinct, why don’t we get some idea of what they are? Are these all bacteria?
Given the dismal track record of “experts” making predictions anout the environment (Ehrlich, Club of Rome, James Hansen, Tim Flannery), I feel comforted when I read these predictions. It’s an indication that the phrophecy is almost certainly wrong
Please, please, PLEASE let it be the ticks that go extinct… Oh, and the mosquitoes, and nats, chiggers…
Is Obama going to attend?