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Warning Signs: Earth Summit Babble

Does it surprise anyone that the Earth Summit is calling for a “climate fund” and wants nations to kick in $100 billion? The proposal for the fund called “The Earth We Want” covers an extraordinary range of topics that includes gender equality, woman’s empowerment, and all the usual social justice and environmental clap-trap that is intended to ensnare everyone in a web of laws, regulations, and treaties aimed directly at eliminating the freedoms the West has and that many in other parts of the world want.

Gang jailed for £38m carbon credits VAT fraud - IFAonline

Three gang members have been jailed for a total of 35 years for carrying out a £38m VAT fraud through a complex chain of carbon credit trades.

Sandeep Singh Dosanjh, Navdeep Singh Gill and Ranjot Singh Chahal set up a chain of bogus companies in order to fraudulently trade in the EU emissions allowances through a complex 'missing trader' scheme in a six-month period, starting in January 2009.

Rio+20 'Future we Want' draft text - exclusive copy of the document | Environment | guardian.co.uk

The final draft text that will be presented to world leaders as they arrive at the Rio+20 sustainable development conference

Rio+20 roundup : CJR

It also remains to be seen whether coverage of the event will be robust or disappointing. Google News already delivers around five million results for “Rio+20,” but it’s clear that many outlets aren’t as interested the international powwows as they used to be. One indicator is the series of annual climate-change summits that came out of the first Rio conference, where media attendance has fallen since a disappointing meeting in Copenhagen in 2009.

The sustainability and development conferences don’t happen as regularly, but there’s been less grumbling than in the past about which leaders will be present at this year’s forum. George H.W. Bush wasn’t any more enthusiastic about the first Rio confab than Obama is about take-two, Mark Hertsgaard noted in an essay for The Nation, but the press made more of his apathy.

“When Bush was trying to duck the summit in 1992, major media outlets ran a slew of stories reminding him of the potential impact on his re-election efforts, which helped change his mind,” Hertsgaard wrote. “Obama has faced no such flak for being a Rio no-show.”