Brazil conference - Talking shop about the real crisis?

Today nearly 120 heads of state gather in Brazil for a summit on global development. Many of them will be glad of the brief, few days in the sun, away from the all-consuming economic challenges they have struggled with every day and night for the last few years.

However, if they were to honestly consider the full, long-term implications for their grandchildren of environmental degradation, water shortages, climate change, energy conservation, and replacement, not to mention the need to double food production in decades, then many would regard the chaos caused by an imploding currency and the ensuing bedlam as a thing of nothing, a passing trifle to be dealt with before a long lunch.

And, frighteningly for all of us, they would be right.