Conrad Black: G20 summit puts Toronto in a new league | Full Comment | National Post

...The purposes of these endless proliferating meetings became steadily vaguer, the consequences less significant and it is quite likely that proximity leads to as much friction as camaraderie and trust between participants. Skeptics may well ask what good these economic meetings did in foreseeing and mitigating the current economic crisis. There is an element of farce about these occasions, which are conducted with absurd self-importance. Solemn sedans speed up to conference centres, screech to a stop and well-upholstered, striped-suited worthies emerge with bulging briefcases; in a phalanx of cellphone flaunting aides, they bustle within the portentous facades of the meeting places.

And the meetings keep growing larger. At the supremely misconceived Copenhagen Conference in December, China, the greatest carbon emitter of all, po-facedly denounced the whole concept of carbon emissions contributing to global warming, and then took the headship of the G77 of developing countries who were demanding, with cupped hands outstretched, that the economically advanced countries dole out huge compensation packages for their excessive emissions. If the conference movement (for it is no less than that), could survive this charade, it is unstoppable.