It was interesting, but rather depressing, to learn from Forbes Magazine (reported February 28 in the NYT, "Can't Buy Me Love") that the world is currently supporting 587 billionaires - and how many 10's (or is it now 100's?) of thousands of millionaires? While on the same planet, billions live in or close to poverty.

I was brought up - like most people, I imagine - to envy the rich and pity the poor. Who wouldn't like to be a billionaire (or even a mere millionaire)?! Very nearly every one of Earth's 6 billion odd inhabitants who isn't one already, I should think.

But has anyone every stopped to ask how many billionaires and millionaires our planet, Spaceship Earth, with its vulnerable life-supporting ecosystems and finite carrying capacity, can support?

Having given the matter much thought, it seems to me that it is not the poor, after all, who are the world's biggest problem, but the rich. Not simply because they place a much greater per capita drain and strain on our planet’s limited resources and carrying capacity than the poor, but more importantly, because they act as role models, whose "success" and lifestyles most other people (about 6 billion of us at present) seek to emulate. 

If the world's role models and trendsetters are constantly held up, admired and envied for their material "success" and extravagant, non-sustainable lifestyles, as they generally are in the media, what hope is there of us ever establishing a sustainable economy and ways of life for what will soon be a global population of 7-9 billion people?

The answer, of course, is none whatsoever.

To quote the immortal words of Commander James Lovell, when his spacecraft's, Apollo 13's, life-support systems were damage on its way to the Moon in 1970: "Houston, we have a problem".

On Spaceship Earth we too have a problem, which we had better wake up to pretty soon, because, unlike for Commander Lovell and his crew, there is nowhere for us to get back to. Either we solve our problem on board (creating a sustainable economy and lifestyles for 7-9 billion people) or we will perish.

It is as simple as that. But as experience shows, the simplest, most obvious things are sometimes the most difficult to recognise - particularly when doing so would force us to question our most basic assumptions about the world and our role in it.