NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - I've heard a lot from viewers around the world about my somewhat critical comments about the Earth Summit that ended today in Johannesburg, South Africa.

I've been critical of the Earth Summit for taking on two worthy and weighty, but all but insoluble, problems: those of adequately protecting the environment and at the same time ending world poverty.

Either lofty goal is sufficiently challenging, but neither is likely to be solved in conference, and certainly not one with 60,000 people attending, many of whom seemed to have the goal of privately gorging on steak and lobster while publicly worrying over the impoverished and, of course, acting out their anti-American views.

Today, demonstrators in that conference booed and jeered Secretary of State Colin Powell as he articulated the U.S. position on the environment and poverty, and criticized some African nations for policies that are punishing their already impoverished and starving people.

Zimbabwe, for example, which Secretary Powell said has pushed millions of citizens to the brink of starvation with its land reform programs, and Zambia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, which have rejected genetically engineering corn for 14 million hungry people, 300,000 of whom could die of disease and starvation in the next six months.

There are 17,000 tons of American corn now waiting in warehouses in Zambia for distribution. By the way it's the same corn that Americans eat every day.

I'd suggest the conference next time take up a familiar theme with practical possibilities ... think global, but act local. And I certainly hope the president will continue to avoid such gatherings. And perhaps consider not subjecting in the future any U.S. official to such disrespect by baying hypocrites, who are more interested in their political agendas than the powerless people who are being left to die by their governments, just several hundred miles north of where the Earth Summit met.