Open Thread: A Stalled 'Green' Agenda

June 20th, 2012 9:32 AM

As the science behind the global warming fear machine continues to disintigrate, the many enviro-activist hangers-on who have made hundreds of millions scaring their fellow humans are beginning to realize something: while many politicians like to pretend  in public that they are in favor of stopping the supposed crisis, almost none of them actually ever bother to do much of anything about it. The realization comes in conjunction with the "Rio+20" conference, yet another lavish conference to promote climate alarmism which this time is having trouble getting world leaders to attend:

It’s easy to see why there is so much skepticism about this week’s meeting in Rio, officially called the UN Conference on Sustainable Development or “Rio+20.” When leaders met in the same convention centre 20 years ago for the first Earth Summit, they signed Agenda 21, a series of pledges for the 21st century to protect biological diversity, curb climate change, eradicate poverty and stop desertification.

Today, almost none of those pledges has been fulfilled. A recent report by the UN’s Environment Program tracked 90 goals from Agenda 21 and hundreds of other international conventions. It found that significant progress had been made on just four; reducing ozone depletion, removing lead from gasoline, improving access to water supplies and boosting research for marine pollution. Some or no progress had been made on 64 targets and there was further deterioration on eight, such as increased destruction of coral reefs. Progress on 14 others couldn’t be measured because of a lack of data.

There’s isn’t much hope that Rio+20 will change things. Several leaders have skipped the event, including U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Those who did show up are expected to sign a 53-page statement that contains no specifics. There had been hope the leaders would agree to “sustainable development goals” but that fell through and the statement is so weak it was greeted with boos by some delegates when it was unveiled at a preparatory gathering Tuesday. “There is no action. It’s very disappointing,” said Aleksandra Nasteska, co-founder of We Canada, a coalition of activists that was among some 50,000 participants in the preparatory meetings.