Climate change stresses social inequalities

Columnist Polly Toynbee writes that the floods in northern England would have received more media coverage if they had affected the more prosperous south. "it will take disasters happening in rich cities before the reality of climate change forces opinion-makers to put it at the top of the world's agenda. Hollywood films about New York under water are scary entertainment: when the real thing happens in black New Orleans, nothing changes. ... Internationally, climate change will hit the poorest hardest, from Bangladesh and the Pacific atolls to the Sahara, while the west has the money to protect itself. But New Orleans showed how within the rich countries, the way it strikes will emphasise all the existing social inequalities."

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