Sydney Morning Herald: AS 100 world leaders jetted away from the first Rio de Janeiro ”Earth Summit” in 1992, the conference chairman, Canadian entrepeneur Maurice Strong, wept as he told journalists the gathering would fail to avert ecological tragedy unless citizens forced their governments to implement the watered-down agreements the meeting had clinched.
The citizens of the world didn’t. But 20 years later, that first Rio meeting – held in the optimistic glow after the fall of the Iron Curtain – is considered…