Russia Hot summer in Moscow

Written by Rob Jones, Moscow Monday, 09 August 2010 12:50

Warm autumn likely to follow

Dozens have died in fires, hundreds have been arrested, thousands have drowned in the last month as the ecological crisis and the struggle against its causes find their epicenter in Moscow.

This summer has already seen 17 temperature records smashed as temperatures have steadily climbed from the high twenties Celsius in the middle of June, to the mid-thirties in July and now around forty degrees Celsius. Forecasters say this heat wave may last till September and may get even worse. Never have such temperatures been recorded in Moscow.

Solidarity Needed - Socialists brutally attacked after Moscow environment protest

Oil spill is 'worst environmental disaster' to hit US

Written by theSocialist, weekly paper of the Socialist Party England & Wales Wednesday, 09 June 2010 13:38

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following the fatal explosion on the BP leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig has exceeded the Exxon Valdez catastrophe of 1989, when eleven million gallons of crude oil devastated the pristine Alaskan coastline.

A White House energy official described the Gulf of Mexico spill as the worst environmental disaster ever to affect the USA. So far, all of BP's efforts to plug the leaking well - located 5,000 feet below the surface of the sea - have failed.

Behind the Climate Change Scandals

Written by Socialist Party (CWI Australia) Monday, 22 March 2010 08:30

Scandals over the past few months have given rise to people’s concerns about the reliability of scientific evidence on climate change. Recent polls have also suggested that concern about the threat of global warming is weakening in Australia.

In November it was alleged that a series of hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed the manipulation and distortion of data. Then in January it was revealed that a report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) included errors regarding the speed at which the Himalayan glaciers are melting.

Copenhagen cop-out - “a historic failure that will live in infamy”

Written by Editorial from February 2009 edition of Socialism Today, magazine of the Socialist Party (CWI in England & Wales) Monday, 01 February 2010 14:40

The UN conference on climate change (Cop15), held in Copenhagen 7-18 December, was a fiasco. The Independent called it “a historic failure that will live in infamy”. After years of preparation, the representatives of 193 countries discussed and wrangled for two weeks. In the closing hours, leaders such as Barak Obama and Wen Jinbao (and Gordon Brown) flew in, supposedly to break the deadlock. All of them accepted the urgency of reaching agreement. Unless global warming is limited to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the planet faces catastrophe. But no agreement was reached, let alone the framework for a binding international treaty, Cop15’s original aim. Backroom discussions between the US, China and a handful of neo-colonial states (Brazil, India, South Africa, etc) produced an ‘accord’ – a brief memo of vague aims and even vaguer pledges. Completely sidelined, the Cop15 assembly merely ‘noted’ the accord. Almost immediately, China’s representative, Su Wei, announced that, as it was not a formal UN agreement, China reserved the right to repudiate even the accord.

Fermanagh flooding

Written by Domhnall O’Cobhthaigh, Fermanagh Socialist Party Thursday, 28 January 2010 00:00

Communities victims of Executive inaction

After six weeks of rain in which there were only two dry days, many parts of Fermanagh were under water in the early weeks of December. The county, which is divided diagonally by Upper and Lower Lough Erne, saw many of its tributary rivers burst their banks and flow over fields and roads criss-crossing the countryside. The lough itself rose from about 45.8 metres to 48.2 metres flooding large areas of farmland leaving families living on raised positions cut-off as water engulfed their access roads and made them impassable. My own great-aunt had to be evacuated as her home in Innisroosk was cut off once again making sense of a townland name signifying an island. Many other families suffered this experience as inadequate infrastructure failed in the face of exceptional rainfall.

Copenhagen Climate failure exposes failure of the profit system

Written by Owen McCracken Wednesday, 13 January 2010 00:00

The UN’s Copenhagen climate summit has failed to deliver any significant response to the rising threat of global warming. This is unsurprising given recent history of such events, with most industrialised countries currently failing to meet even the grossly insufficient targets agreed at Kyoto back in 1997. This further demonstrates the inability of capitalism to solve the key problems facing the world today.

No capitalist solutions to climate change

Written by Administrator Monday, 26 October 2009 00:00

World leaders are to meet in Copenhagen this December to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol in an attempt to control greenhouse gas emissions. But after their failure to reach the modest target set at Kyoto of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 5.2% from 1990 levels we should not expect that whatever agreement they reach will seriously tackle the threat of climate change.

By Daniel Waldron