The UK government recently approved a new oil field which, according to the Carbon Brief Analysis, has the potential to "release roughly the same annual emissions of around 90 countries and 400 million people".

Due to the fact most of the product from the oil field is predicted to be exported, the impact this initiative will have on lowering energy bills for the British public has been described as "at most, marginal", by the Climate Change Committee, an independent public body which advises our governments.

Rolling back climate change policies and targets in the name of prioritising the cost of living crisis, as the Tory government is in the process of doing, is incredibly short-sighted at best and intentionally deceptive at worst.

The climate emergency and the cost of living crisis are not two separate problems, but symptoms of a systemic issue which threatens every aspect of our lives: greed.

It's not fear-mongering to call it a climate emergency and most people who might disagree are privileged enough that the crisis hasn't directly impacted them yet.

The most ironic part is, in all likelihood the climate emergency will not drastically change the lives of those in power at all: if sea levels rise they'll be able to afford the high ground, in natural disasters they will have the means for evacuation and relocation.

As we see in every emergency, those with wealth, power and privilege will enjoy the luxury of safety while those they were supposed to protect and govern are burning, drowning and working themselves to death on a planet which we knew how to save decades ago.

The people least likely to have their lives detrimentally impacted by the climate crisis are those who contribute to it the most, which is perhaps the cruellest irony of all. Those who create the destruction are those with the means with which to avoid its worst impacts.

A report by Oxfam found that billionaires contribute one million times the emissions of the average person. To put that into context that means if one million people ceased to contribute to the climate emergency in any way, their efforts would be entirely swallowed up by the actions of the wealthiest 125 people. The deflection onto personal responsibility is constantly forced upon the public, telling us to recycle, to turn the tap off when brushing our teeth or to take shorter showers when statistically speaking, this is a drop in an ocean polluted with the cloying hypocrisy of those who would charter a private plane to an environmental conference, moralising about how dearly they hold a planet they're happy to poison.

The saddest part about poverty, the cost of living crisis, world hunger, and the climate emergency is that, for the most part, it is a frighteningly open secret that these issues, if not caused, are exacerbated by the desire to hoard resources and enjoy the luxury of not having to care.

There are more than enough resources to feed everyone, clothe everyone, house everyone, medicate everyone who needs it, enough resources that nobody on this planet has to live or die cold, hungry and in pain.

It has long been argued that there is no ethical way to become or remain a billionaire, regardless of how the money is acquired (often through wage theft and tax avoidance), the sheer fact someone can be in possession of such astronomic levels of wealth represents shameless resource hoarding.

A person physically cannot spend a billion pounds, it accumulates interest at a rate which makes it ridiculously self-replenishing. My dad always says when it comes to material possessions, "you can't take it with you," which is absolutely true, but it doesn't take into account the insidious nature of generational wealth and the ways it perpetuates a system of power and privilege.

The richest families produce the wealthiest children who are able to pursue the most expensive education and enter a pipeline of the most lucrative careers. A lot of them choose to go into politics, where they are able to literally dictate policy to the rest of the country.

Then, having more wealth than the majority of their constituents will ever see in their lifetime, they create false "us and them" dichotomies and engage in petty political games, creating and maintaining the kind of division which keeps the people focused on anything other than how poorly their leaders are serving the very communities they were elected to serve.

Around and around we go and then suddenly here we are, having to choose between the long-term environmental stability of our entire planet, and the short-term issue of having enough money to feed ourselves and our families.

The people with the power to make decisions seemingly on a whim, against the advice of experts, will never have to argue with their partner about whether they really can afford the exorbitant luxury of putting the heating on, or ask themselves if they can afford to take an unpaid sick day.

If governments invested money into improving the heat retention of homes we could drastically reduce the amount of energy needed to heat them, and thus the amount people need to spend on heating bills. If politicians invest more in green energy, we will no longer be as reliant on fossil fuels, and if the UK government prioritises innovation and investment in these areas, we would create stable, secure jobs in an industry not beholden to the destruction of the environment.

The problem with the metaphor of a carbon footprint is that it implies each of us have the same sized feet. Some people tiptoe through the world trying to minimise their impact and limit the damage they do, and some stride right onto their private jet, leaving their morals (and 2 metric tonnes of c02 per hour) in their wake.

There is a vast discrepancy between the super-rich, the political elite, those with the power to effect change, and those subject to their decisions, who know from experience that a change is very unlikely to happen unless it directly benefits those making it.

It is within that vast chasm, separating what they could do and what they will do, that the morality of the ultra rich dies in shame.