If there is any hope for the world then it must rest with young people. They grow into this world with a new understanding and new ideas of what matters.

If we give them the abilities to explore and to learn about the world, they will understand it better than we do. The danger is we teach them what we think we know, and leave it at that.

Creatures live in harmony with nature, they are changed by it rather than they cause it to change. We have lost contact with nature.

Children change as they grow up. What they think about the world changes from early childhood when they begin to realise they are part of the world, through to young adulthood when they’re out in the world on their own. What they think and what they do is very different through these years. As adults we settle into a life where there is little change around us. We get used to doing the same things, and we like the familiar. As adults we don’t change very much because we have stopped growing and our environment does not change.

There are many things we can do, now. The simplest one is to consume less. But, we are not going to do that. Why? It’s not the way we live. We expect to be able to have what we want. In time, perhaps, we will be able to use less of the Earth’s resources as more of these changes impact on our lives. But, not now. Peoples behaviour is very hard to change. We are just too busy living our lives, to think about and take action on events that may or may not happen in the future.

Some scientists have said that we change now, or it’s going to be too late. Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year, "If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

Business and government leaders have to realise this. And they have to take action that will persuade, or force us to consume less. One way of doing this is to allow prices to rise. The recent increase in the price of oil, to over $120 per barrel, is a move in the right direction. Politicians are now bringing in cap-and-trade schemes, that are supposed to encourage businesses to reduce their carbon emissions.

Again, this is not enough.

The World Resources Institute has published a report [i] on the 4 billion people who live on or below the poverty line - at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). They dwell not so much on the poverty, but on the fact that the BOP population segments are, for the most part, not integrated into the global market economy and do not benefit from it.

They write there is no proper market economy, either local or global, they have access to. Without access to larger trade markets they are disadvantaged and likely to remain in poverty. In local markets they are often exploited by their employers, or through middlemen. They do not have access to the basic economic resources, that we have in the West, for example, bank accounts, communication media, information libraries.

As a result - and this is surprising - they are likely to pay more for basic goods and services then wealthier people, either in cash or in the effort they must extend to obtain them.

Take coffee. The West does not grow coffee, we import it mostly from places in South America or Africa. We pay little to the local farmer for the coffee bean that he grows. We pay according to local conditions, and that means a low wage. We do not pay the environmental cost that is a result of extensive farming in these areas. We are not paying the full cost of health insurance for the farmer and his family, nor do we pay for his pension when he retires.

We get our goods cheap.

[i] http://www.wri.org/publication/content/7791

Michael T. Klare, in Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, writes that the United States produced more than its actual use of energy- it exported the rest - and this drove the country’s prosperity in the post World War II era. America’s dominance in this period rested on its enormous economic growth, and its military power. Both rely on oil. However,

Domestic oil production reached a peak in 1970 and has been in decline ever since — with a growing dependency on imported oil as the result. When it came to reliance on imports, the United States crossed the 50% threshold in 1998 and now has passed 65%.

In contrast, Russia is now "is the world’s second leading producer of oil (after Saudi Arabia), and is its top producer of natural gas."

Russia supplies its neighbouring countries with most of its energy requirements. It now has growing influence on the shape of politics in Europe, and increasingly the rest of the world. This has undermined America’s influence.

Today, the Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon took control of west Beirut from the government. There is now an arc of Shia Muslims in control from Iraq in the South West, through Iran, to Lebanon in the North. To the right of this arc the Sunni countries of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and to the left is Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

Even with this shift of power the OPEC countries, on a request by America, refuses to increase production to reduce the price of oil from its current $126 per barrel. They see no benefit.

In the past these Sunni kingdoms were happy to supply cheap oil to America because it assured them of their security against Shiite Iran. Now, with the failing war in Iraq, these countries are not sure that America can provide the stability they need. They continue to supply the oil but now it’s more for dollars then guarantees of stability.

In the politics of power countries look after their own interests.