Rio+20: Greens Concede Defeat As Developing Nations Reject Green Agenda

Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, has admitted that the Rio+20 deal is “disappointing.” He blamed China and other developing countries that have huge reserves of coal and want to continue using fossil fuels to grow, for failing to back plans for the green economy. “The political significance of Rio is that the G77 nations are antagonistic to our European ideas on the green economy,” said Mr Clegg. More than 190 countries are gathered in Rio for the largest ever United Nations summit on the environment. Held 20 years on from the Earth Summit in 1992, 'Rio+20, was supposed to set the world on a new development path powered by renewables rather than fossils fuels like coal. However Mr Clegg admitted that the deal is “disappointing”. Plans to shift to a ‘green economy’ by scrapping fossil fuel subsidies and pumping money into new technologies like wind and solar have been watered down. ‘The Future We Want’, as the deal is known, commits the world to new ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ or SDGs. But there is no timetable for the new targets, that are likely to focus on increasing the amount of energy from renewables, cleaning up water supplies and cutting chemicals in farming...more