Word: rios
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...midpoint a week ago, the giant Earth Summit in Rio seemed to be on the verge of completely disintegrating. Angered by Washington's refusal to sign the "biodiversity" treaty to protect the world's plants and animals, several poorer nations considered withdrawing their support for the pact and even spoke of reviewing their position on the agreement to combat global warming. At summit headquarters trivialities and private agendas derailed serious debate over the plan of action called Agenda 21. Arab delegates pushed for oblique references to emotional and irrelevant issues like the plight of Israel's occupied territories, while...
...organizations as H.E.M.P. (Help End Marijuana Prohibition). Asked what the drug had to do with sustainable development, spokesman Ron Tisbury had his offbeat sound bite ready: "Anything you can build with petrochemicals, you can make out of marijuana." The media began using words like farce and fiasco to describe Rio, and one participant called the conference the "greatest fraud ever perpetrated...
Still others applauded the creation of a U.N. Sustainable Development Commission, modeled on the Human Rights Commission, which will use public criticism and pressure to hold governments to account for achieving the goals laid out in Rio. Whether the new commission becomes a real watchdog will be determined later this year when U.N. nations decide whether to make it a body composed of government ministers or of officials at the margins of influence...
...RIO SUMMIT: Bush Plays...
...questions are more than idle speculation. This week at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, world leaders will be adding their signatures to a treaty to prevent climate change, a document that was significantly weakened during presummit negotiations, in part because of U.S. contentions that the threat of global warming has been overblown. But the Bush Administration's skepticism must contend with the direct experience of millions of citizens who are worried that when the weather gets as odd as it has been of late, something must be wrong...