Make you Fink on Friday

Rio summit: Little progress, 20 years on

Twenty years after the first Rio summit, campaigners say this global gathering has failed to achieve similar results

 

On the final day of the UN sustainable development summit in Rio, UN chief Ban Ki-moon has urged governments to eliminate hunger from the world.

The secretary-general said in a world of plenty, no-one should go hungry.

The final phase of the summit has seen pledges from countries and companies on issues such as clean energy.

But a number of veteran politicians have joined environment groups in saying the summit declaration was “a failure of leadership”.

And UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg described the outcome as “insipid”.

The meeting, marking 20 years since the iconic Earth Summit in the same city and 40 since the very first global environment gathering in Stockholm, was aimed at stimulating moves towards the “green economy”.

But the declaration that was concluded by government negotiators on Tuesday and that ministers have not sought to re-open, puts the green economy as just one possible pathway to sustainable development.

Mary Robinson, formerly both Irish president and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said it was not enough.

“This is a ‘once in a generation’ moment when the world needs vision, commitment and, above all, leadership,” she said.

“Sadly, the current document is a failure of leadership.”

The former Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, who chaired the 1992 Earth Summit, said the declaration did not do as much for environmental protection as for human development.

“This old division between environment and development is not the way we are going to solve the problems that we are creating for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren,” he said.

“We have to accept that the solutions to poverty and inequality lie in sustainable growth, not growth at all costs.”

Mr Ban had hoped the summit would take firmer steps towards ensuring the poor had access to water, food and energy.

However, his flagship Sustainable Energy for All initiative was merely “noted” in the text, not enthusiastically endorsed.

Source: BBC News Read more

Opinion:

Sadly, the Rio Summit on sustainability was a waste of time and money. When you balance the priorities less was achieved in 2012 than in 1992, and nothing has been done since 1992, so we can fully expect less to be done after 2012.

The answer to my last question on yesterday’s post:

No they won’t!

The world’s leaders are more interested in feathering their own nests by advancing development at all costs, even if those costs are too high for the planet to pay.

The chance was there, they blew it.

They can’t get it into their thick heads, that there will not be another chance. Twenty years on will be too late; they will see that in twenty years and they will come to understand that 2012 was the last chance. There will be wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in the future, but the door of opportunity was closed, it will all be in vain.

Brazil’s ex-President  Fernando Cardoso was right, “This old division between environment and development is not the way we are going to solve the problems that we are creating for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”

The theme of Rio +20 was ‘sustainability’, and here’s the joke; the initiative was merely ‘noted’ in the text.

There is only one thing left to say:

Will the last person alive on Planet Earth please turn out the lights, we must save power!

Earth Summit 1982 – 2012 R.I.P.

A pretty logo, thousands of delegates, millions of dollars in a city that didn’t listen in 1982 and they couldn’t fight their way out of a supermarket bag.

Hot air and the predicted nothing of importance was the outcome.

Oh, they’ll crow and make noises about being a success despite the summit being watered down and diluted like bad whisky.

In reality, it was a FLOP.

This summit was probably the most important of its kind ever held. It is the last of its kind where we have a chance to save anything. In another 20 years, there won’t be anything salvageable to save.

The sustainability of this planet is under threat. The threat is so dire and so imminent that we can’t trust politicians to deal with it.

This mess is beyond political solutions.

The big problem is that we have arrived at this point by being lead by the nose by politicians and their fancy rhetoric.

We have to change the whole paradigm.

The politicians must be kept at bay with huge sharp sticks. They must be kept totally out of the solution making process. You can’t fix a problem by using the same thinking that created it.

It is high time for the people to take control, because politicians can’t be trusted. The people have to turn to independent specialists  with no political agenda, platform or axe to grind.

We have to give the scientists and philosophers a chance to succeed where the politicians have failed. Any corporate, military or government affiliations would disqualify anticipated members of such a solution.

The results would be mandatory. The governments would have to follow or be tried for treason in that they have betrayed the planet. The governments would have no say in the matters, they would have no veto, they would implement the ideas regardless of the financial loses to the corporations, Wall Street or the lobbyists.

Bitter pill, swallow it!

.

The world has given the governments the chance to fix the problems time and time again; and each time they have failed, failed so miserably that it is an embarrassment.

There is only one choice left.

We have no option but to heed it, or we are doomed to perish.

We are already on the verge of annihilation with the nuclear issue, but if there is a remote chance of ridding ourselves of nuclear energy, we have to consider the people.

No, it’s my ball! You go find another one to destroy!

The human race is out of control.

It’s not the planet that needs saving, it’s us that need stopping.

It is our insatiable need to have everything and do nothing to produce it.

We have raised each successive generation to to ‘want & want now!’

Consumerism and debt are our biggest enemies.

20 years ago

In 1982 Severn Suzuki, a 12 year old made an impassioned plea; she literally silenced the world for six minutes.

This time it is Brittany Trilford from Wellington, New Zealand to address the Rio +20.

“A Wellington school girl has stood before world leaders and called for an end to broken environmental promises.

Brittany Trilford, 17, was one of the opening speakers at Earth Summit 2012 in Brazil this morning.

She was selected after an impassioned video that impressed a jury including Hollywood actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Don Cheadle.

The Queen Margaret College pupil showed no nerves as she stood before the crowd.

“I’m here to fight for my future. That’s it,” she said.

She said environmental problems were getting worse and action remained inadequate.

“We plunder away our natural resources, diminishing our biodiversity, our oceans, our forests, and then we demand more.”

Her speech follows in the tradition of  Severn Suzuki, “the girl who silenced the world for six minutes” after her speech at the original 1992 Earth Summit in Rio as a 12-year-old.” – The Dominion Post

This is her message:

The question is, will the leaders listen?

Only if the corporations let them.

Chew on This

Formula One

Formula One racing, not only but all motorsports that use non-renewable natural resources, should be banned.

Stock cars, Indy 500, all of them.

From the production of the cars, the construction of the tracks, the transport used to get them around the world and the races themselves.

Ban the lot!

And show that we are serious about trying to create sustainable living on this planet.

Why aren’t matters like this being discussed at Rio +20?

 

Monday Moaning

Rio+20: Prince Charles in climate change warning

Prince Charles says greater knowledge is needed about the state of the planet

The Prince of Wales has warned of the “catastrophic” consequences of inaction on issues such as climate change, at a UN sustainability conference in Brazil.

Prince Charles said he had “watched in despair” at the slow pace of progress on the “critical issues of the day,” in a pre-recorded video address in Rio.

He urged world leaders to adopt a more integrated approach to issues such as climate change and food security.

Waiting for the worst to happen would be “too late to act at all”, he said.

Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, is attended by heads of state and representatives from governments, non-governmental organisations and the private sector.

In his address, the prince said scientific evidence showed the potential consequences of ignoring the risks.

‘Sceptical reluctance’

“Like a sleepwalker, we seem unable to wake up to the fact that so many of the catastrophic consequences of carrying on with ‘business-as-usual’ are bearing down on us faster than we think, already dragging many millions more people into poverty and dangerously weakening global food, water and energy security for the future,” he said.

“One thing is clear. We need to be much more informed about the actual state of the planet.

“We do not have nearly enough knowledge on which to base the decisions that will be the best for the long term.

“Until we do, we expose ourselves to the mounting danger of major shifts in policy that are not well conceived, but come as panicked responses to crises that could have been avoided.”

He said the “outright, sceptical reluctance” by some to engage with these issues had often slowed progress “to a standstill”.

Pointing to the work of his International Sustainability Unit, a foundation set up to campaign on global sustainability, the prince said a better picture of environmental problems was needed before effective policy could be implemented.

‘Don’t have long’

He said data on energy, water, biodiversity, forestry and soil, which is collected separately, needed to be combined and analysed as a whole.

“If this could happen, at least then we would know what the state of the planet actually is – and then plan accordingly,” he said.

He went on: “We do not have long to capture such a comprehensive picture, and so I would appeal to you as you meet here in Rio to make an even greater and concerted effort to persuade policy and decision-makers to act before it is finally too late.

“It is, perhaps, a trait of human nature to act only when the worst happens, but that is not a trait we can afford to rely on here.

“Once the worst does happen, I am afraid that this time around it will be too late to act at all.”

The conference marks the 20th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second largest city.

Source: BBC News

Opinion:

My earlier gloomy prediction has all but come to pass. Rio +20 has produced more hot air than greenhouse gases.

The talks stalled, only but at that stage only 37% of the UN’s draft text had been agreed on in the end.

“Faced with a triple planetary crisis – climate catastrophe, deepening global inequity and unsustainable consumption driven by a broken economic system – the text is neither ambitious enough nor delivers the required political will needed.” – BBC News

There is no commitment to end fossil fuel subsidies, as some countries have been advocating. Energy and water are two of the major issues that have been diluted.

As predicted, the worst offenders the US, Canada and the China bloc of 131 developing countries, have previously put red lines through many elements of the new text.

Procrastination as financing was deferred until 2014.

Basically the whole thing is a white wash.

We need action NOW!

Make you Fink on Friday

Did we listen 20 years ago?

The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes

No!

Will there be a similar message at Rio +20?

I think not.

The reason… because it would show that future generations, our children, are not really on the agenda! It would show that in 20 years we have done nothing!

Severn Suzuki’s plea is as poignant today as it ever was, more so; because since her speech more animals have become extinct, more money has been wasted on wars, more pollution has choked our waterways, more consumers have increased their consumption.

No, we didn’t listen then.

And the biggest offenders aren’t interested in listening now.

The only green agenda item that is being considered…

is MONEY!

Why Rio +20 will Fail

Rio +20 will fail, just like Rio before, Johannesburg, Kyoto, Copenhagen.

All failures.

Unmitigated failures.

and Rio +20 will follow suit.

Why?

Until there is a mechanism that controls the duplicity of politicians and punishes them heavily for consorting and being funded by corporations and vested interests, all will be a failure.

For there to be any future progress in these types of conferences politicians need to be kept as far away as possible, banned from the event.

The event participants need to be independents and have the powers to dictate to the politicians the results that will benefit mankind and the planet.

Politicians, and I don’t give a tinker’s cuss if he’s a president, ought to be fined; or tried for treason and imprisoned or banned from holding public office for life.

Corporations who flout the laws, should be fined heavily and I am talking 1bn+ for each and every infraction; or have their companies closed. Put the executives on the dole queue.

Until this happens, we, our descendants and the planet are doomed.

Make you Fink on Friday

Green decline ‘may bring irreversible change’

Climate change threatens to make life worse in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa

With forests and fish stocks declining, water demand rising and lack of action on climate change, humanity’s path is anything but sustainable, the UN warns.

The Global Environmental Outlook says significant progress is seen on only four out of 90 environmental goals.

Meanwhile, a team of scientists warns that life on Earth may be on the way to an irreversible “tipping point”.

The UN Environment Programme (Unep) urges leaders to agree tough goals at this month’s Rio+20 summit.

Where governments have agreed specific treaties, it says, major change has transpired.

However, negotiations leading up to the summit appear mired in problems, with governments failing to find agreement since January on issues such as eliminating subsidies on fossil fuels, regulating fishing on the high seas and obliging corporations to measure their environmental footprint.

Source: BBC News Read more

We are in the final week counting down to Rio +20, that is the 1982 environmental conference twenty years on.

The United Nations conference on sustainable development.

I am not holding my breath for anything spectacular; unless you consider hot air and rhetoric as spectacular.

Everything from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which targeted this year (2012) for all nations to reduce their carbon emissions to pre-1990 levels; and what has been done?

Nothing!

The countries that were the worst offenders then, are still the worst offenders, many of whom wouldn’t sign the agreement.

I fully expect a similar result from Rio +20. Like Copenhagen was sabotaged by the Chinese, these conferences are a grand excuse for lots of talking, fancy dinners and exhibitions.

The world is in imminent danger, we are creeping closer to irreversible changes by the day and the world’s leaders make promises, then breath a sigh of relief and go home to worry about how to get elected again. If that means pushing environmental issues to the background because big money demands it, so be it.

I disagree with the use of ‘may’ in the title, ‘may’ implies a strong possibility. I would prefer to think ‘is going to’ is more appropriate, ‘is going to’ implies a high level of certainty.

Because I am certain that the irreversible changes are already here.

We no longer have a beautiful green planet.

The planet has been relegated to being a dirty mud ball.

Oh, the conference will talk about pollution, water, agriculture, food shortages, hunger, sustainability, etc. All wonderful things, but will it address such issues as Japan’s nuclear power and the ever present danger of the moment where a catastrophic collapse of the cooling towers will release enough radiation to contaminate the entire northern hemisphere.

If the northern hemisphere becomes uninhabitable, where the hell are the survivors going to go?

The southern hemisphere, of course. There isn’t enough habitable land mass in the southern hemisphere.

Just think, all of Europe, North America and much of Asia fitting into Australia, Africa and South America. Do the math, it doesn’t fit.

Stop for a moment and think of the entire northern hemisphere migrating to the south. Think of the sovereignty issues, think of the enormous refugee camps, think of the food shortages then.

Americans, the British, the French, the Israelis, the Libyans, the Mexicans, the Russians; where are you going to put a billion Chinese… all refugees clambering for space and survival.

The result:

Total chaos!

That is a high probability situation for the future given the prevalence of earthquakes in Japan that could collapse the cooling towers.

And, nobody is talking about it, neither governments, nor media, nor Japan, nor nuclear vested interests.

If you are in the northern hemisphere, and if you survive, you could reduced to refugee status.

Now, where is your house, your SUV, your high standard of living, your precious college education, your social media networks?

All gone!