The ITT List How Climate Change Got Removed From the Agenda of
the Rio+20 Summit The Durban Climate Conference last winter
ended in almost unqualified failure. The original framework of
U.N. climate negotiations was all but abandoned in favor of a
new global pact that may or may not be negotiated by 2015 and
may or may not be legally binding. Climate change deniers
literally crashed the party by parachuting onto a beach in
Durban carrying a “Climategate 2.0” banner—and public perception
in the U.S. on the reliability of climate science continued to
shift in their direction, cementing the stalemate on a domestic
climate deal. Now, it would seem, many international negotiators
have altogether given up on the idea of establishing a global
regulatory framework for reducing carbon emissions. Next week,
more than 130 national leaders will gather at the Earth Summit
in Rio de Janeiro to discuss proposals ranging from replacing
GDP as the indicator of economic prosperity to conducting annual
“state-of-the-planet” ass