Rio Earth Summit: Welcome to the 'insidious conspiracy'

Twenty years ago, Pres. George H.W. Bush told those gathered at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro that he brought an action plan to combat climate change.

"It stresses energy efficiency, cleaner air, reforestation, new technology," he said.

The 41st president also started his speech with a Chinese proverb: "If a man cheats the Earth, the Earth will cheat man." He then followed with, "The idea of sustaining the planet so that it may sustain us is as old as life itself. We must leave this Earth in better condition than we found it."

Blast from the past

That was then. The United Nations' Rio + 20 Earth Summit this week has ushered this debate back into the political scene.

Bush's words show how much he was ahead of his time. Now Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney skirts the entire issue, leaning as far from the entanglements of climate change as he can. According to Neela Banerjee at the New York Daily News, Romney "expresses doubts about climate science like the majority of his party."

Romney says if elected he would support expanded coal and oil production and work to "amend (the) Clean Air Act to exclude carbon dioxide from its purview," according to his official website. He also calls solar and wind failures.



Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., takes aim at such positions in a fiery speech on the Senate floor on the eve of Rio + 20. If he had looked like this during his failed presidential bid, things may have turned out much differently.

Channel that inner Bruce Lee to clean energy

Bruce Lee was more than a movie star to those of us who watched all his movies many, many times in the early 1970s and beyond.

He was THE movie star. The guy we all wanted to be. Somebody who didn't necessarily want to get involved (note the opening scenes in "Fist of Fury") but ended up spinning a couple of nunchucks ("Return of the Dragon") in a back alley with a grin on his face and kicking some serious, um, tail.

Enter Sir Richard

I thought of Lee while watching a video-taped interview of Richard Branson, the Virgin Group billionaire and knight of the United Kingdom, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Likewise, here's a guy who has his own island, is one of the world's richest men and wants to make the world a better place by enhancing sustainability and renewable energy.

Talking to Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz Group Inc., Branson says every business and individual can make a difference. "Every single decision they make can put the environment first," he says, adding "don't do it in a way that will bankrupt you."