As the climate emergency worsens, the wealthiest will suffer from it the least. This is despite the disproportionate contribution of the uber rich in the Minority World – most of whom live obscenely in their opulence – to the continuing climate crisis. In contrast, poorpeople – most of them living in the Majority World – will be hit hardest and most severely by the effects of rapid global heating.

Space tourism began in 2001 when an American investment manager paid the Russian space agency US$20 million to travel to the International Space Station on a Soyuz rocket. In 2021, three US-based companies began launching tourists on their own rockets: Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX. The emergence of Space tourism raises difficult issues. One such issue is the environmental effects of launches on the atmosphere and the corresponding implications for climate change. Space tourism also raises difficult questions of international law, including, where does space begin? Who gets to call themselves an ‘astronaut’? Do states have a duty to rescue tourists stranded in space?

Despite the war on poverty declared in different ways by various politicians in different countries since World War II, the rich–poor divide continues as it has been more or less the same for the last ten thousand years or so. Also, the rich–poor divide continues across revolutions and across societies that describe themselves using different labels, such as communist, capitalist, socialist, liberal-democratic, and Islamic. For example, the number of billionaires in communist China rivals that in the capitalist United States, and the rich–poor divide in Islamic Iran is even great than in most European countries. Various legitimizing ideologies are used to justify the rich–poor divide, with the rich using their power and resources to shape education, the media, religious ideology, and the various other avenues for socialization and communication. The tendency for both the rich and the poor to believe in a just world and to blame the victim is discussed in this chapter, in relation to false consciousness and legitimizing ideologies, to explain the continuity of societies with enormous rich–poor divides.