Rich countries pursue highly indebted poor countries to service their foreign financial debts, at great cost to the millions who subsequently go without vital health and education services. But industrialised countries are themselves responsible for a much larger debt to the global community. Their reckless use of fossil fuels has helped create the spectre of climate change a storm cloud which hangs over everyone's future. And it is poor people in poor countries who suffer first and worst from both extreme weather conditions connected to climate change, and from the struggle to service unpayable foreign debts. Our understanding of debt, and who owes it, is horribly wrong and needs changing.
Geological history shows the earth gripped by natural cycles of coo ling and warming.
Whatever the distant future holds for our climate is hard to predict. Many of those most at risk live in poor countries. Already development work has been affected in many countries from Bangladesh to Tanzania and Honduras. To solve the problem or, at least, mitigate its worst effects, we will all have to live within our environmental budget. The atmosphere can only absorb a certain amount of greenhouse gases before disruption begins.