To: letters@independent.co.uk
Re: The real problem with the rich
Date: Thursday, 20 April 06

Dear Sir/Madam,

In their article, "The pay debate", in today's Independent, Terry Kirby and Louise Jack ask whether some people should be allowed to have incomes of a quarter of a million pounds (10 times the national average) or more a year?

This is an extremely important question to ponder upon, since there is little awareness of, and much reluctance to facing up to, just how central it is to the problem of global warming and of achieving sustainability - for 7-9 billion! people on our finite and vulnerable planet.

Contrary to popular (and most expert) opinion, it is not the poor who are the world's biggest problem - but the RICH. Not simply because they generally place a far greater per capita drain and strain on Earth's limited natural resources and finite carrying capacity than others, but because they function as role models and trendsetters, exemplars of "success", whose grossly materialistic and utterly unsustainable lifestyles (along with many of the values, attitudes and aspirations which underlie them), communicated and reinforced by the media, not just millions, but billions of people are striving to emulate.

In our heart of hearts many of us know that we cannot carry on like this, since not even the lifestyle of an average American or West European, let alone a rich one, is sustainable on a global scale, yet we are having the greatest difficulty in admitting it to ourselves. In the following short essay, which I wrote for David Cameron's Quality of Life Policy Group, I offer an explanation as to why this is: Concerning the root causes of non-sustainable human activity 

Yours sincerely

 

www.spaceship-earth.org.