Rio 20 - Another Conference

Rio 20 - June 2012

It seems like every year or so there is some big conference of nations that is supposed to be the beginning of saving the world. They usually start with a few letter and followed buy a number. G8, G20, Rio 20, etc. Rio 20 is the next of these types of conferences. The interesting twist with the Rio 20 is that it focuses not just on the environment but on sustainable development. It seems idea is that they world is going to grow in population (we just hit 7 Billion and 8 Billion is probably just a little more then a decade away). Much of this population growth seems to be in developing nations. So if we as a planet can get involved and try to get this development to happen in a green way right from the start we can at least stem some of the bad effects that developed nations went through. 

Will it end in Disappointment? 


Like I mentioned it seems that most of these conferences just end in disappointment. Part of the problem though is that they come in with such lofty goals. Like they are hoping that the leaders will come to some kind of conclusive decision on some key point. They really want it to go their way because it will really set the world in motion to being greener, even though they know all the folks with money who back all the campaigns of all these leaders are against it. What do you think is going to happen right? It seems like every time the leaders make it look like it was really close and they say they really wanted to but they just couldn't agree to some small issue and it all fell apart. What a surprise!

So far I haven't heard of any such lofty goals for the Rio 20. So from that stand point it appears its more of just a meeting without specific goals so it would be hard to classify anything as a failure. They really just are saying they are trying to launch a global conversation. Now, don't get me wrong I'm all for this, but at the same time without some kind of concrete goal it hard to see them really getting anything does except for collecting frequent flyer miles and hotel points. I sincerely wish them luck though and hope they succeed. We as a planet really need to shift our thinking and begin to change our actions. We are going to run out of oil and it is going to dynamically change how we live, especially because there are just too many people in the world to sustain without oil energy! The only real question is how early we as a population really realize we are close to this kind of crash. The early we start acting the softer the landing is going to be. If we wait until we just can't afford gas for our car anymore it's going to be a really rough go!

So for Rio 20, and any other conference with some letters and numbers for that matter. I wish you luck but then again its not folks like me you have to convince, it's the folks with all the money that pay for election campaigns!