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Cancun is one of those typical resort towns, with luxury hotels lining a long beach peninsula that juts out from the mainland. Separated from the lived realities of the vast majority of Mexicans, tourists and international delegates to the Climate Change negotiations are kept isolated in a bubble of extreme decadence. Most of the hotels are all inclusive, meaning that you are able to consume as much food and drinks as your heart desires. Bizarrely however, you have to pay use the gym facilities at the hotels.

This means that you are encouraged to over-consume and discouraged from pursuing healthy exercise. In many ways this is the kind of trap that we have got ourselves into with climate change. Our economic system is geared towards encouraging our societies to consume as much cheap fossil fuels as possible while imposing costs on our transition to cleaner forms of technologies. It is easier for us all to just sit there getting fat claiming that it is too much effort to try and shed the extra weight. Besides we seem to be arguing, why must we spoil a good party and sacrifice some of our leisure time for activities that are not going to contribute to our fun.

Along comes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and demands that we all follow a strict diet and start engaging in healthy pursuits or else our global health will rapidly deteriorate. Relax we say, we are young and invincible and besides we can’t let all this food go to waste.

‘Why mustn’t I fill my plate to the brim with sugary desserts’ says the American couple in the corner, ‘look at all the new Chinese guests scrambling to get at the bowl of noodles.’

The Europeans by the window discreetly sip their glass of wine while sympathizing with the starving Africans that have their noses pressed up against the locked glass doors. ‘If only we could share some of our food with them,’ they say, ‘but the Americans would get too upset and the Canadians will then not allow us to tuck into their secret punchbowl of hard liquors.’ Lets rather close the curtains and party right through the night. The bill has already been paid and we will just have to endure a major hangover in the morning.

Unfortunately though, sooner or later we will have to grow up as a world and stop throwing our lives away on one big party. It is time for us to take responsibility for our global health and start moderating our intake of energy. We will also have to pay the costs for that gym and start sweating out our excesses. Eventually we will realize that true fulfillment does not come through hedonism but through disciplining ourselves and sharing our resources with others. Let’s just hope we can all recognize this before our health problems turn into a full-blown heart attack!