Rio +20 will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil between
June 20-22nd 2012. It is a political meeting sponsored by the United
Nations. According to the UN, “world leaders, along with thousands of
participants from governments, the private sector, NGOs and other groups, will
come together to shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and
ensure environmental protection on an ever more crowded planet to get to the
future we want”.
Nothing is likely to happen, other than thousands of people
increasing their carbon footprint and talking endlessly about things they are
unlikely to agree on. All of the per-conference preparations suggest that there
is no basis for an agreement and no basis for optimism about an agreement on a process by which an deal can be reached. This
process is dead and needs to be buried.
This is not the view of all. Those with a major vested interest
in such events, like the World Wild Life Funds (WWF), see such meetings as
important. It’s a chance for them to show its influence and showcase its
thinking – after all, the WWF has hijacked many other UN processes, such as the
International Panel Climate Change. Its also a chance for them to strike at the
conscience of liberals and secure more donations – after all, their CEO is paid
more than the President of the United States.
Despite the unlikely prospect for success, Rio +20 will focus
on seven key areas for action. These are: jobs, energy, cities, food, water,
oceans and disasters. Climate change – once seen as the most pressing issue
facing the planet – is cast off into an underlying factor shaping the response
to these seven issues. Not forgotten, not the center-piece.
A core argument will be that, unless urgent action is taken,
then the planet and its people are in peril but national governments cannot
deal with this international issues, so transnational governance is needed and
the UN can create appropriate governance mechanisms to respond to these
challenges. This has been the argument since the Club of Rome produced its
first report and predictions of environmental doom were made in the 1970’s
(none of which turned out to be accurate). The idea being that new governance
models will only emerge if enough fear is created to generate demand for them.
This was H L Mencken’s point:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep people alarmed (and hence
clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of
hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
So we can expect rhetoric like this:
“Civilization
will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against
problems facing mankind.”
“We
are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and
of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
“Tt
is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
“Population
will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food
supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million
people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
- all predictions made at a similar event in 1970 and
repeated annually (only the dates and attribution change and we have gone from
the threat of a new ice age to the threat of global warming) ever since.
Virtual science will be invoked to claim that there is a
scientific consensus that disaster is just around the corner – all based on
incomplete computer models of the future rather than data collected and
analyzed from direct observation. In fact, there is no scientific consensus on
all seven of the issues to be discussed.
So keep an eye on Rio +20 – after all, you are paying for
it.
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