OTTAWA - The huge Rio de Janeiro summit on sustainable development is drawing to a messy close and the end results mean Canada does not have to lift a...

Last week, Rio+20 felt like a family reunion that no one wanted to be at -- as if someone had declared 20 years ago that the world would gather in Rio and we all begrundingly came down to suffer through it. And so it began, everyone waiting around for the other shoe to drop, and when it finally did on Tuesday, it landed with a hollow, empty thud. Rio failed, and it hadn't even really started yet.

A 12-year-old Canadian girl -- Severn Cullis-Suzuki -- stands before world leaders at the Earth Summit, expressing the fears and despair of a young generation facing a bleak future for the planet they will inherit. That was 20 years ago. And what has changed?