By James Copley Militant protesters in the mid-Sussex town of Balcombe have temporarily disrupted energy firm Cuadrilla’s exploratory drilling for oil. Perhaps more importantly, they have brought to public attention the controversy around hydraulic fracturing – or “fracking”. Through persistent acts of civil disobedience and camping out on the site of the drilling, courageous activists […]

A recent US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report shows CO2 emissions rising for the second highest time on record in 2012. While largely caused by the expansion of coal-fuelled power plants in the developing world, it won’t have been helped much by US and UK plans to expand shale gas extraction. Another factor […]

THE CAPITALISTS’ LUST for oil and gas knows no boundaries. From wars to extortion, economic sanctions and environmental disasters, these are all just unfortunate blips in the profit figures for those who control the globe’s ever-dwindling supplies of fossil fuels. In recent years rising oil prices, in part due to the instability caused by imperialist war […]

IN PREVIOUS editorials we have argued for a strategy to beat the cuts, centring on the need to win the unions to an all out general strike to smash the austerity programme and kick out Cameron and Clegg. This month I want to use this editorial to discuss something not covered in the rest of […]

World leaders failed the planet yet again in Cancún, Mexico when the Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP16) could not reach a legally binding agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol – which runs out in 2012. Less than half as many delegates and observers attended, compared to the 45,000 at the previous COP15 […]

The systemic causes of the climate crisis and the role of the working class in solving it.