Hint: I think the questions may be a touch self serving.

And that’s not even taking into account what type of person would vote at these things.

Rock concert looked fun though.

Two decades ago at an international conference on economic and ecological sustainability at La Trobe University, I asked what the world would like like if the (then) total GDP of all nations was divided between the world’s population with a maximum disparity in distribution of 2:1.

I got no answer but the question caused much discomfort among delegates from the third world, most apparently from the wealthiest 1% of their nation’s citizens. It seemed that if my hypothetical question was actualised they, too, would enjoy a reduced life style.

All those we now entrust with planning for a future that may be shaped by a rapidly changing climate are in that 1% of world citizens. Deep down, I suspect, they believe that wealth will buy them exemption from change, insulation against the weather, protection from civil disorder.

With Goldman Sach back at the executive bonus trough and the recently retired CEO of Qantas as shining examples of the altruism of the wealthy, I fear humankind cannot put aside self interest, hard enough and long enough, to achieve anything against any environmental change, near imperceptible in the short term, but destructive in the longer term.

Even here in south-eastern Australia we haven’t dealt with the salinity that for generations has been destroying rich agricultural lands before our eyes.

And of course, if climate change is not anthropocentric but terrestrial, then we have a whole other strategies to consider

Is it a time to think triage. What can we save, where, at what cost and for how many?

Now some will say I’m too pessimistic, but only a sober appreciation of the consequences of the wrong diagnosis and the wrong remedies will suffice now.

This study is interesting but flawed in methodology. The alarmist language, especially of worlds one and two easily lead the respondent to world three. What is truly fascinating, however is that anyone voted for the first two options. I suspect that this simply confirms that 8.5% of young Australians aged 12-29 are functionally illiterate.

However, world action on chloro fluro carbons a decade ago, and malaria a decade before, does hold out some hope, but an awfully large number of profligate voters in the democratic developed world are going to have to take a BIG cut in lifestyle, in equity to the second and third world, and in preservation of the first.

A big ask with election every three years and no sign that politicians are less opportunistic than before.

And… PS. World three seems to mark the extinction of the difference between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’. Sad really.