Writing in the Guardian, Monbiot, noted ecowarrior had this to say:

You have only to see the way the United States has savaged the Earth summit's draft declaration to grasp the scale of this problem. The word \"equitable\", the US insists, must be cleansed from the text. So must any mention of the right to food, water, health, the rule of law, gender equality and women's empowerment. So must a clear target of preventing two degrees of global warming. So must a commitment to change \"unsustainable consumption and production patterns\", and to decouple economic growth from the use of natural resources.

Most significantly, the US delegation demands the removal of many of the foundations agreed by a Republican president in Rio in 1992. In particular, it has set out to purge all mention of the core principle of that Earth summit: common but differentiated responsibilities. This means that while all countries should strive to protect the world's resources, those with the most money and who have done the most damage should play a greater part.

This is the government, remember, not of George W Bush but of Barack Obama. The paranoid, petty, unilateralist sabotage of international agreements continues uninterrupted. To see Obama backtracking on the commitments made by Bush the elder 20 years ago is to see the extent to which a tiny group of plutocrats has asserted its grip on policy.

To those who take a realistic view of climate change, that climate has been changing since before man evolved on earth and will continue long after we as a species are gone, may well applaud the lack of any substantive action from the conference, as we don't know whether mankind is affecting climate in any appreciable manner.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/18/rio-2012-earth-summit-protect-elites