Rio+20 failed, plain and simple. Few are surprised, and many are grasping at straws within the weak, toothless text, searching for something to grab onto to claim victory. Rio failed because if it had succeeded, it would have fundamentally undermined some of the most powerful forces on the planet: big polluters.

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.