Thread by @SteB777

Whilst we ponder what might come out of COP26, I think it's a good time to ponder what if anything was achieved by far the biggest international summit there has ever been, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit?
un.org/en/conferences…

Sure, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, under which auspices the COP talks are held were signed at Rio 1992, but we're now on the 26th, and have so far got nowhere. Unfortunately it doesn't look like much is going to be achieved at this one.

Except for all the #blahblahblah and signing bits of paper, was anything achieved at Rio 1992, which sent things in a different direction? I'm really struggling to think of anything, so please help me by naming something?

Again, sure lots of things were signed and pledged. However, over 50% of emissions in the whole of history have occurred since Rio 1992 and there have been massive declines in biodiversity. So it isn't clear what was achieved.
ieep.eu/news/more-than…

Of course some will argue it could have been much worse without Rio 1992, but I don't see how. It has got much, much worse, we are on course towards catastrophe and there is no plan in sight to address this crisis. So how could it be worse?

It could be argued that if no agreements had been made at Rio 1992, we'd have been so shocked at the lack of potential action, we'd have been more determined to take it.

You see it is my contention that the 1992 Rio Earth Summit seriously misled the public. That it falsely appeared as if the solutions to the climate, biodiversity, sustainability and ecological crisis had been agreed upon and solved. Actually nothing had been achieved.

I say this is the real crisis. That the public thought our leadership had the plans to address this crisis and potential catastrophe, which they plainly don't have.

The result was that for the next 30 years, everyone went about their business as if the problem had been solved, mistakenly thinking it was fine to continue with business as usual, because our leadership had assured us this was entirely compatible with addressing the crisis.

Self-evidently this whole perception was wrong, because we have a fraction of the carbon budget left we had 30 years ago, and biodiversity and habitat declines have been massive.

The only thing we can be certain of is that business as usual is entirely incompatible with addressing this crisis, because we have 30 years of empirical evidence of what happens with business as usual.

I mean this massive increase in extra GHG emissions, and the last 30 years of biodiversity declines might be not so bad if we had some feasible plan to rapidly turn things around as we were assured was possible. Yet the thing is we don't have any such plan.

Therefore, we lost a valuable 30 years where we could have been making incremental changes, because our governments misled us into believing we could carry on with business as usual, and quickly fix things in 30 years time (now).

Yet, now our leaders want us to believe, that whilst they are not going to do anything immediately, don't worry, by 2050 we'll have done something. However, this report by the IEA suggests this is just yet another lie.
theguardian.com/environment/20…

Surely, the only conclusion from this is that our leadership is not fit for purpose. Bizarrely tonight, world leaders have been having a great big junket, so celebrate what? Their complete failure to do anything meaningful in the last 30 years, when they promised they would.