I saw a tweet from the UN the other day inviting people to vote yes or no on initiatives that the United Nations should focus on at their Sustainable Development summit in Rio.  The summit, called Rio+20 is doing a crowdsourcing exercise called “Rio+20 Dialogues”.  I don’t know if they’ll actually look at the results, but I figure that in life, the decisions are made by those who show up- even figuratively.

Many of the initiatives I did not vote for, simply because they were too statist, left-wing, or open to abuse.  Several also struck me as completely outside the appropriate scope of a development conference.  Here are those I did vote for, and why:

Promote food systems that are sustainable and contribute to improvement of health.  While they don’t explicitly say it, this pretty much requires more emphasis on local food, which in turn requires governments to stop stomping on small farmers.

Develop policies to encourage sustainable production of food supplies directed to both producers and consumers.  Ditto.

Create incentives to encourage work from home.  In the past, most people worked from home.  New technology is making that possible again, but many potential jobs are hampered by outdated regulations or managers who react glacially to change.

Take concrete steps to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies.  Fossil fuels do not need subsidies, and the subsidies artificially hide the real costs of purchasing decisions.  Capitalism requires information in the hands of consumers.

Require “ecolabels” on products with clear information about the product’s energy efficiency.  Capitalism requires information in the hands of consumers.

Ensure economic empowerment to promote self-reliance. You want sustainable development?  Get out of the way of individuals and let them create their own future.

Put a price-tag on natural resources, so that they are not economically invisible.  Capitalism requires information in the hands of consumers (and producers).

Include environmental damages in the Gross National Product (GDP) and complement it with measures of social development.  Again, I have no problem with more information, especially with calculating future costs (like cleanup and resource depletion) into current productivity.  Good economic decisions can only be made in the presence of complete information.

That’s it.  Out of 100 suggestions, I could only feel remotely comfortable with less than ten.  Even there, I can see that there is potential for abuse, but involvement in a republic (or any society) requires a certain willingness to trust.  Unfortunately, I only trust this Rio+20 conference to ask for more centralization.  There was even an item that asked for a global governance conference in 2013- there go the One World folks again…

Of course, if enough people vote only for the most limited-government initiatives, maybe someone, somewhere will get the message that we want REAL Sustainable Development, not the statist dream of central planning and the global mess that would cause.