I DESPAIR. I thought the recent architectural and environmental excesses in Dubai, the Middle East financial trading hub in the United Arab Emirates, were bad enough only to now discover that the plans for the next decade make the current abuse almost incidental.

Oil has got much to answer for, and it's not just the unwanted CO2. It has provided the wealth for the economic expansion that has seen the population increase from a third of a million to over two million, including over 100,000 tax free British expatriates, in less than thirty years. This transformation means that oil is now secondary as the city has become the shopping, tourist, financial and transport centre for half the globe. It's an urban shrine to money, greed and self interest.

They don't do things by half so now they have the world's largest man made harbour, two enormous palm tree shaped patches of land recovered from the sea with roads, houses, hotels, and amusement parks, as well as the most expensive hotel in the world, built like a large glass sail. To cap it the world's tallest building, the Khalifa Tower, is over half a mile high, almost three times taller than the Shard in London.

Not only has constructing all these pretentious buildings in the last decade produced vast quantities of climate warming CO2 but they're all air conditioned using natural gas, so there's even more CO2, while the almost constant sunshine is generally ignored. In addition the provision of water from the sea by desalination uses more gas, and it's the ultimate textbook example of how not to live on a planet with finite resources.

They have learned little from this economic gluttony and environmental vandalism if the proposed development plans are anything to go by. The ambition is to build the world's largest shopping centre, the World Mall, inside a climate controlled city that will be one hundred times the area of Bradford's new Westfield centre. Its hotels, including one under water, shops and theatres will be modelled on Oxford Street and Broadway, and there'll be a replica of the Taj Mahal, only four times larger.

Disappointingly such irresponsible excess and obscene opulence is encouraged and supported by the global financial markets, and this isn't acceptable for two very important reasons. Just a fraction of this unnecessary investment directed to improving the health and water supplies for those in many of the neighbouring countries would help keep the regional peace, and they should be ashamed of being the world's number one CO2 producer.

At 33 tonnes per person annually, (the UK nine, and Costa Rica just over one) their indifference to the world's climate borders on the criminal.