Rio +20

Right now, in Brazil,  50,000 participants from around the world, including many heads of state, have convened to talk about the state of the environment on planet Earth. It's called, Rio+20, because it was done once before, in Rio, 20 years earlier.  Sadly,  little was accomplished at the first Rio meeting. Rich countries and their monied interests aligned themselves against the best interests of the rest of the world. The consequences of our collective inaction are clear for all to see.  The world is a third larger in population.  Our dependence on fossil forms of energy is  overheating our atmosphere and wrecking our environment, while our quality of life erodes, stuck in the economic doldrums. The world is now overwhelmed with global scale problems that have substantially worsened in the two decades since the first time we tried to get our act together in Rio.


We  have the technologies and public policy protocols to make things right. What we lack is the collective will.   The people we have elected into governance and put in charge of our fate are not worthy. They are not getting it done. They are not leading us toward a better tomorrow.  They have largely become willing enablers for corporations and other monied interests who put their corrupt self-interest over the welfare and will of the people.

Sad to say, the same regressive forces that stifled the outcome of the first Rio meeting are also at work now.  The second Rio meeting appears on its way to the same kind of shamefully inadequate outcome that marked the first.

The ship of human civilization is foundering.  As Rio +20 aptly demonstrates, our leaders are  incapable of leading. The good ones are mostly toothless, and the bad are corrupt to the core. Corrective action must come in spite of them.  It is encouraging to note that the biggest share of participants in Rio+20 are not corporate hacks or professional politicos. They are the unofficial delegates; witnesses, poised to push back against officially sanctioned malaise.  Change can and will come from the bottom up; from these faceless, disillusioned  masses. They are the ones we must count on to forge a compassionate consensus that will save humanity and the biosphere.