Wasted opportunities in Johannesburg

www.enterpriseeconomy.com ^ | 09-04-02 | j.d. tuccille

[john bell hood]

For good or ill, the WSSD did achieve something. After days of wrangling, negotiators reached agreement on improving sanitation around the world, protecting fisheries, promoting so-called renewable sources of energy, defending biodiversity and improving access to clean drinking water, among other lofty goals. But most of the language was left vague, with a few firm targets, such as promises to somehow halve the number of people without toilets by 2015 and to establish protections for fisheries by 2012.

That vagueness is probably a good thing. Commenting on the agreement's endorsement of renewable energy without setting any timetables, James K. Glassman notes that this "resulted from pressure by poor countries, which resisted calls by Europeans for a requirement that renewables generate 15 percent of the world's energy by 2015."

Excerpt. Rest of article.

[john bell hood]

Basically, the conference was just a bunch of third-rate statists blowing enough hot air to raise global temperatures by a couple of degrees.

[shaggy eel]

A conference gathered of important people, who individually could do
nothing, but together they decided that nothing could be done.