Billed as a bold undertaking, the 1992 summit meeting on sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro represented a monumental effort by the world’s nations to stave off environmental Armageddon.
It produced one treaty aimed at combating global warming and another devoted to preventing the extermination of entire species of plant and animal life.
Canada — and individual Canadians such as summit organizer Maurice Strong — played a key role in an exercise that captured the world’s imagination.
Two decades later, another international conference on the environment and economic development has just wound up in Rio. Yet the Rio+20 summit has only served to remind us how pathetically little we’ve done.
Canada’s role this time was to act as a spoiler and saboteur. According to the Reuters news agency, Canadian and Venezuelan negotiators combined in an unholy alliance to squash any attempt to limit government subsidies to fossil fuel producers such as oil companies.
To compare the two summits is to chart the brief rise and rapid decline of governmental — and perhaps popular — interest in the environment.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government says it doesn’t have the luxury of worrying about environmental matters because it has to deal with the struggling economy.
Yet 20 years ago, the Canadian economy was in even worse straits than it is now, with 11 per cent of the labour force out of work.
That didn’t stop the Conservative government of the day from signing onto Rio.
Unlike Harper, then-prime minister Brian Mulroney attended the Brazil summit. Unlike Harper, he publicly backed the accords signed at Rio — even though, in one case, doing so put him at odds with the United States.
To go back into old newspaper clippings is to be reminded of how different those times were.
In 1992, most newspapers had environment reporters. The Rio summit was such a media event, Associated Press reported, that at one point journalists vying with one another for press handouts almost got into fistfights.
Today, few Canadian media organizations have environment reporters. And almost none bothered to send anyone to Rio.
In 1992, U.S. President George Bush the elder, while reluctant to attend the summit because he faced a tough fall election, was finally forced to go to Rio. Politically, he could not do otherwise.
This year, America’s current president, Barack Obama, chose to avoid Rio because he faces a tough fall election. He has suffered no discernable political downside.
And yet the problems identified at Rio 20 years ago — particularly those connected to climate change — have only gotten worse.
So why the difference?
One reason is disillusionment. Rio’s treaty on climate change begat the Kyoto Protocol, a pact that committed its signatories, including Canada, to reduce carbon emissions.
Yet many nations, including Canada, chose not to honour their commitments. When Harper came to power, all he had to do was deep-six Kyoto’s corpse.
The other reason is that anti-environmentalists have raised their game. They don’t call themselves anti-environment, of course. They say quite the opposite.
But the oil companies and carbon producers who fear that action against greenhouse gases might hurt their profits have a far firmer grip on government and, through advertising, on the popular imagination than they did in 1992.
Their mouthpieces in government routinely denounce as radical ideologues those who dare complain.
If the original Rio was a triumph for the environment, Rio+20 belongs to the antis. We are furiously pedaling backwards.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Thomas Walkom
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