Who takes the heat for global warming, and who just gets a good tan?
Dubbed the "Earth Summit", the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Guess who the people deciding the fate of our planet were in 1992. Should we really do that again?
There have been three major global environmental summits my lifetime. The first was in 1972, in Stockholm, Sweden. The most recent was in 2002 and held in Africa. You probably didn't hear about either of those. The middle event, the most famous one by far, was the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. Metaphorically speaking, if held in our little country, it would be as if the first one was at a center of intelligence like Harvard, the third was where lots of environmental trouble is like, say, Cleveland, and the only one that made the papers was held in Las Vegas – go figure. It doesn't take any sort of brain surgeon to figure out why the Earth Summit in Rio got more diplomatic attendance and more splash in the popular press than the actual Earth ever did. It's difficult for diplomats, political appointees, and the popular press to resist any venue where you can eyeball women wearing swimsuits that fit in a bottle cap – clothing so small that Brazil has a special cosmetic treatment named after it.
Global warming and ozone depletion seemed to dominate the issues in 1992, so maybe that's why they chose a location so close to the sun that the women only wear the tiny bottoms of their swimsuits. Or maybe that's why the facilities were built on the beach, with about $33 million of Brazilian citizen's money (by the way, the minimum wage in Rio was a little over $2 a day, so $33 million of public money probably put a good dent in the average Brazilian lunch box).
There were 175 nations at the conference and 108 of those were represented by heads of State. We can assume that most of the other 67 were actual smart people. If allowing State politicians to decide the fate of our environment causes problems, and allowing Federal politicians control causes even more, one wonders how much trouble we could cause by allowing our world political leaders to decide our collective fate. Alas, instead of scholars, we got stuck mostly with officials, much like the Sacred College of Cardinals deciding a new Pope – in complete isolation from the real world. What is the King of Zamunda going to know about determining the best strategies to curb stratospheric ozone depletion? He probably hasn't wiped his own backside once since birth, so I seriously doubt that he is any sort of refrigeration thermodynamics expert that can help us find alternatives for chlorofluorocarbons. After all, the purpose of any summit is to lock the best minds in a room and emerge with a decision to benefit all concerned. But as might be predicted, no white smoke was ever seen. In fact, the delegates emerged from their Brazilian conclave with no environmental remedy. Not even a real consensus plan – just great tans.
How high is up, or, how high is screwed up?
They wanted top-level officials and policy makers so that they could come to a concurrent global solution. The terms "top-level" and "high-level" are often tossed about as synonyms, but are nearly direct antonyms. I have a history as a FORTRAN programmer, a very high-level language. That means that I'm not smart enough to get down in the guts of the system and program at "lower" levels, but whenever you say "high-level", most people tend to always think of it as a good thing. Top-level positions are a lot like Homer Simpson's job of minding the post just in case someone needs to hit that one button. Top-level positions are also probably the reason that Windows comes with Solitaire. But all animals including humans have that posturing thing – the taller, the better. Cats arch their backs, bears get up on their hind legs, politicians have soap boxes, and the Pope has that balcony thing. Even the word 'summit' itself refers to the highest level.
Give a hoot, let's pollute
The beachfront conference facilities were built about an hour's drive from the city and heads of State don't carpool. Hell, they don't even motorcade-pool. That means that, at about 3 limousines and 4 escort motorcycles each, over 750 vehicles made that 2-hour round trip just to get the heads of State there from the Rio de Janeiro Airport. That leaves those 67 smart delegates to fight it out at the Avis counter. The other 30,000 in attendance (press, activists, etc.) probably slept on the beach in order to do their part to prevent climate change rather than being complete hypocrites. Otherwise, that road would have looked like the parking lot exit lane at a Hannah Montana concert.
There are only about 300 garbage trucks in all of Brazil that serve 188 million citizens. Almost all collect the refuse only from the 6.2 million residents of Rio de Janeiro, so about 183 million residents get no trash collection at all. To put that in some perspective, here in Phoenix, a collection fleet of a little over 200 covers about 1.2 million single-occupancy residents (the remaining 300,000 residents use private collection companies). On average, one truck in Phoenix collects refuse from six thousand residents. In Rio de Janeiro, an average truck would have to collect from well over twenty thousand residents. (The city should have several hundred leftover 1992 stretched Escalades somewhere sitting around that could be put to good use here, but that's just me talking.)
About 4300 miles of sewer collection system serves just 20% of the population, but it doesn't matter much for the 20%, since the disposal method that they use is to pipe it a few miles out to sea so that it doesn't stink up the beaches. I'm beginning to think that maybe it wasn't the very best environmental move to pile thirty thousand extra people in this city.
So, UNCED didn't do so well on net environmental gain; not much better on waste reduction, either. Several lengthy pacts came out of UNCED, but it is best known for Agenda 21. The document was big enough, but a proper global environmental pact should contain a bit more substance than hot air. It was larger than Torah (the first five books of the Bible) Since Agenda 21 is over 600 pages and much longer than the attention span of most attendees, they also published a 116 page guide and then a 33 page press guide for those that really didn't understand it, or heads of State that didn't want to carry that much weight around, or (most often) both. Of course, you still should add in printing ink, toner for the copy machines, and, of course, plenty of camera film (for the indigenous naked scenery, as mentioned above).
It took two years for the world's best scientists to prepare Agenda 21 for these delegates to fly to a beach near Rio and talk about it and do virtually nothing with it. I'm sure that the Earth Summit was a boost to the Brazilian economy, and interesting for service industry employees:
"This is room 417. Tell the Prime Minister of Japan that if he drops one more water balloon on my head, I'm going to kick his ass."
"Of course, Senator Gore, we'll send someone right up"
After Pope Clement IV died in 1268, the Sacred College of Cardinals was deadlocked by political differences for about three years. In a desperate effort by the church to break the stalemate, the cardinals were fed only bread and water. That failing, the roof of the building they were staying in was removed. The measures worked, finally, because a new pope was elected soon after the comforts were removed. Perhaps our world leaders would have reached consensus in 1992 if less luxurious alternatives were available, and it was a massive environmental burden for a city ill-equipped to bear it.
Cheers,
Bob Peeples, PE