Our planet Earth currently has enough resources for each person to live healthily, peacefully and prosperously. Consider however the following statistics from Global Issues:

• The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income.
• The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.
• Up to 30,000 children die each day due to poverty.
• Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
• For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment.
• The world’s billionaires — just 497 people — are worth over 7% of world Gross Domestic Product. A mere 0.13% of the world’s population control 25% of the world’s financial assets.
• To provide universal education, basic health, nutrition, water and sanitation in all developing countries, it would cost the world an extra $40 billion dollars a year. Europeans spend nearly 4 times that amount on cigarettes and alcohol. Nearly 20 times that amount is spent every year on weapons around the world.

Global climate change is now finally accepted as reality, and fuel prices are rising fast as we approach the end of cheap fossil fuels. In 2007 the Government of the United States - a country that consumes a quarter of the world’s energy - spent roughly $1,150 million dollars on alternative energy research and development. That may sound like a lot of money, but it amounts to just 1.18% of what they also spent on the Iraq war in the same year, according to the website Solar Power Rocks.

Clearly current systems of government are not working for the benefit of humanity or the planet we live on, as many of these situations mentioned are actually worse now than they have ever been. It is for these reasons that Global Votes was born.

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