Friday, June 22, 2012

Rio+20 draft text is 283 paragraphs of fluff

The introductory paragraphs to Geroge Monbiot's latest ...

Rio+20 draft text is 283 paragraphs of fluff | George Monbiot | Environment | guardian.co.uk:
"In 1992, world leaders signed up to something called "sustainability". Few of them were clear about what it meant; I suspect that many of them had no idea. Perhaps as a result, it did not take long for this concept to mutate into something subtly different: "sustainable development". Then it made a short jump to another term: "sustainable growth". And now, in the 2012 Rio+20 text that world leaders are about to adopt, it has subtly mutated once more: into "sustained growth".
This term crops up 16 times in the document, where it is used interchangeably with sustainability and sustainable development. But if sustainability means anything, it is surely the opposite of sustained growth. Sustained growth on a finite planet is the essence of unsustainability."
Read the entire column on the Guardian's Environment blog:

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