Climate change is the symptom - unfair resource use is the cause

Almost half the world is being kept poor by a fifth of the world who live like kings. In the middle, a third of the world's people are working to bring their lifestyle up to the level of the kings.

The kings enjoy a safe, comfortable, complex life, full of choices and convenience. They live in places like the United Arab Emirates, the US, Australia, Canada, the UK, New Zealand, Finland and other parts of western Europe.

They say things like 'Make Poverty History' and 'Stop Climate Change' but they go on using their cars, changing their kitchen appliances, insisting on street lighting to keep themselves safe and intoning 'how can we make sure this never happens again?' whenever something bad happens to them.

Meanwhile, the poor experience wars, conflicts, drought, flooding and the destruction of their original sustainable lifestyles, whilst visions of the kings' wealth are beamed into their homes through global media.

When the young men from the poor try and get to the kings' lands to find a better life and work for their families back home, the kings pull up the drawbridge and panic about 'uncontrolled immigration'.

Kings: unless your use of resources is fair (around the average of 1.6-3 global hectares per person), then You Are The Problem. To say that climate change is the problem is like saying that the spots are the problem when you have measles, or that diarrhea is the problem when you have food poisoning.

Look at your lifestyle and your country's systems, then compare them with your neighbours from the middle third of the world:
- if you live in the US (footprint 9.7 global hectares per person), compare yourself with Mexico (2.4), Venezuela (2.3), Argentina (2.2), Chile (2.2), Brazil (2.1), Uruguay (2.1), Bolivia (2.0), Costa Rica (2.0), Paraguay (1.9), Cuba (1.7), Jamaica (1.7), Panama (1.7) and Dominican Republic (1.6).
- if you live in the UK (footprint 5.6 gha per person), compare yourself with Ukraine (2.9), Serbia and Montenegro (2.5), Bosnia Herzegovina (2.2), Macedonia (2.2), Romania (2.1) and Turkey (2.0).

Then start making some dramatic changes. Perhaps start by respecting the poor, the small and the frugal instead of trying to 'develop' them out of existence - instead, get some ideas from them about how to live more sustainably.

Total safety, comfort, convenience and choice are not sustainable - not for everyone, not even for the current 20% who are kings (witness what is already happening). So for the kings to carry on expecting them as their right is to steal someone else's resources and put the planet into overload.

Future London

Yesterday I visited the Future London exhibition in Brick Lane:

It's interesting and has some inspiring points, but I don't think it goes far enough. I know the current approach to environment issues is to draw people in gradually and not scare them, but I think that underestimates the intelligence of the public, especially the young.

The main thing it needs is an interactive method of making comparisons - between parts of London, London and the rest of the UK, UK and the world:

- push button charts in which people can check the footprint of their borough and see how much each component accounts for (see the Stockholm Environment Institute's REAP website for all the local authorities in the UK - free but registration required).

- maps with push buttons in which the footprints of London can be compared with footprints around the country and across the world

This will help people realise how high up our lifestyle is on the scale of use of resources (and therefore of privilege). In general, footprints are higher among wealthier boroughs than among poorer ones:

- Kensington & Chelsea's footprint is the highest at 6.58 hectares per person, of which 1.4 is for food and drink (eaten in and outside the home). So the average person in Kensington & Chelsea uses as much land for food and drink alone as a person living in Albania, Ecuador, Egypt or Thailand does for ALL their needs.

Some more comparisons:
- six boroughs have footprints of 6 global hectares (gha) per person or above (Wandsworth, City of London, Camden, Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea)

- 11 boroughs have fooprints of less than 5.4 gha/per person. They are: Barking & Dagenham, Newham, Bexley, Hillingdon, Waltham Forest, Hounslow, Havering, Enfield, Tower Hamlets, Sutton and Greenwich.

How London compares with the rest of the country:
- local authorities with footprints above 6 gha/per person include Epsom & Ewell and Guildford (6.5 and 6.51 respectively).
- local authorities with footprints lower than any in London include Merthyr Tydfil (4.91) and Easington, County Durham (5.01).

The exhibition closes in Brick Lane on the 16th, then reopens at the Science Museum on the 25th. I asked an attendant there whether it would be the same exhibition and he thought it probably would - but perhaps the above points could be included in a future exhibition? It's a good idea, and if some of the items (like the zero energy house) could be available as portable exhibits that would be brilliant (eg. in libraries, shopping centres etc).

Best wishes
Cathy
Aitchison Media & Development