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.