The G8/G20 - Toronto's 'World Class' boondoggle-cum-traffic disaster

The G8 and G20 conferences start this week in Toronto.

Whose idea was this? What a colossal waste of time and resources.

Not to mention - w/r/t this blog - the disaster it means for traffic in downtown Toronto.

Surely the agenda will include items like global warming and reliance on fossil fuels, especially with the Gulf oil spill going from bad to worse.

How many tonnes of pollutants will be fired into the atmosphere, how many barrels of petroleum will be consumed, flying these bigwigs to The Big Smoke from every corner of the earth?

Although how you can have corners in a globe I’ve never been able to determine…

Not to mention (2) the additonal local pollution that the massive traffic jams will cause.

Have the people who organize these things never heard of teleconferencing? What a wasted opportunity to show the world how conferences of the future should be conducted.

It’s all words - which may also, metaphorically, be only so much (more) hot air.

It’s not like there is anything tangible these people have to see, touch, feel, taste or smell.

It’s not like they are, for instance, flying to Colorado to test-drive a new Bentley…

Comments

[Larry]

Yep. Driving in downtown Toronto will become even less of a good idea than before.

I don't see why this can't be achieved with teleconferencing, as you suggest, or failing that, on an island somewhere.

[R wint]

Jim not to worry about traffic nooo-body will be there but protesters and the people they are protesting against. I drive for Go and normally in the mornings the buses can be 20 mins late getting into Union Station some are now getting in 10-20 mins early. Maybe this might a wake up call for all the paper pushers that they don't all have to congregate downtown to do what ever they do and they can work from home or satellites north of the city and save gas and pollute less

[DJL]

Part of the reason for the so called world leaders to get together is so that they can have confidential, off-the-record, conversations. It's difficult to be completely candid with somebody when you're staring into a camera. So I certainly understand why they'd want to have these meetings face-to-face. It's really too bad there isn't some sort of permanent location, with all the necessary security already established where these meetings could regularly take place. Oh, that's right, there is such a place. It's called the United Nations.