Rio+20

Well, a text has been published, promptly to be shredded publicly by the NGO's, criticised by just about everyone and described as 286 pages of fluff by George Monbiot. Not a very auspicious lead for our commitment on climate then!


And yet it seems that the general consensus around the World is that we are in trouble and getting in deeper and faster, so why no hard and fast agreed targets, I would have settled for five bullets points in place of all those pages, just so long as everyone shook hands on them!

I could suggest some good bullet points that were floating around the debate:

• An agreement to phase out (rapidly) all fossil fuel subsidies and introduce binding transparency on energy costs and subsidies (especially for nuclear).
• A global route map for transition to low carbon economies.
• A target for various methods of sequestration, forest protection and reforestation.
• A commitment to move away from GDP to a broader set of measures for well being, to better reflect the 3 pillars of sustainability as equals.
• Set targets to transform taxation and tariffs to reflect sustainable consumption and production (i.e. move away from labour tax to energy/water taxes and leverage for off-shore impacts, as this builds in an element of fair trade).

These are just my pick of the bunch, but at least it would be a start. I can't help but think that the document for this summit should have been replaced by a visit to the art, as this describes our problem and it would have been much more thought provoking:
http://gu.com/p/38f2z