Climate Depot Featured at UN Earth Summit: ‘Failure here is good for the world’s poor people. We need to redefine sustainable development as oil, gas, coal’

RIO DE JANEIRO – Climate Depot’s Executive Editor Marc Morano addressed the UN’s Rio +20 Earth Summit on June 20 and 21. Following a video presentation by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Morano addressed a packed room at a CFACT press conference at the UN complex in Rio, followed by a hostile Q&A session. (Selected video highlights available here.)

Update: Watch Morano’s full opening statement to UN Earth Summit here.

Selected Highlights of Morano’s statement to UN: “What a difference 20 years makes. This is a mockery of where we were 20 years.

I challenge UN activists, environmentalists, Greenpeace, and the media to ask Sec. Hillary Clinton what the objective here in Rio is for the U.S. Her objective is nothing more than to check a box and get the hell out of town. She is going to be conning people if you believe she is here for substantive agreement.

[…]

We are witnessing an historic moment in history of UN. UN IPCC chair Pachauri is now saying global warming is but a secondary problem to sustainability. The UN is now saying saving species is a greater urgency than global warming. They have now thrown global warming under the bus in favor of species extinction.

[…]

Failure here is good for the world’s poor people. Failure is the only option for this conference if you care about the environment and poor people. Carbon based energy has been one of the greatest liberators of mankind in the history of our planet.

James Lovelock, the father of the modern green movement says “sustainable development” is “meaningless drivel”.

I will go further and say we need to redefine sustainable development as oil, gas, coal — energy that works and energy that lifts people out of poverty.”

[End Morano statement.]

Selected Excerpts of CFACT speakers at UN press conference:

CFACT Executive Director Craig Rucker: “While we stand here, 1.4 billion people are suffering in poverty…Any hope they have of rising out of poverty is being threatened by the negotiations here at Rio+20. […] There is no imminent eco-disaster. We must not sell the potential prosperity of the poor for the dirty rags of sustainable development. Human beings must come first. In fact, history has shown that the environment is best protected when humans prosper. It is no coincidence that the regions of the world with the