Environment
Climate change – just how can it be tackled?
This September, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a highly anticipated report detailing the latest findings on global warming. Drawn from the meticulous, peer-reviewed studies of over 800 leading scientists, the IPCC document refutes claims that climate change is uncertain, in decline, or not caused by human activity.
Fuelling world hunger – biofuels not the route to sustainability
Biofuels are fuels that are produced from living or geologically recent organisms such as plants. These have long been regarded by some as a possible alternative to fossil fuels and contributor in solving the environmental crisis facing the planet as a renewable form of energy. In September of this year the European Parliament is due to discuss changes in EU biofuel policies.
Environment: Climate change accelerates
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the main cause of global warming, has reached a critical level. Carbon dioxide is released by the burning of coal, gas and oil, so called fossil fuels.
Environment: China’s pollution overload
People in China’s cities are choking on smog. This past winter the capital Beijing, and other northern cities, suffered their worst air pollution readings on record.
Doha climate talks dead-end
The latest UN-sponsored climate talks in Doha in December ended in total failure – just as previous summits have. Friends of the Earth called the talks a "disaster zone" and Greenpeace asked of the negotiators: "What planet are you on?" As usual, the capitalist politicians taking part tried to talk up the outcome. Ed Davey, Lib Dem climate change minister, claimed that "it is genuine progress... It is a bigger step forward than people have given us credit for".
Too many people – Has world population reached its limits?
One of the major divisions within environmentalists is on the issue of population and ‘overpopulation’, with many claiming that a key cause of environmental damage is too many people. The British Royal Society recently released a report, People and the Planet, which argued that, to avoid "a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills", the world’s population needs to be stabilised. Ian Angus and Simon Butler’s book, Too Many People, examines these claims and explores their implications.
Global warming: Socialist plan for the environment is needed
Global warming is the overriding environmental issue facing the world. 20 years have passed since the United Nations’ (UN) ’Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro highlighted the problem. However, the output of greenhouse gases that cause climate change has continued to escalate to a critical level that threatens environmental catastrophe. As emissions have rocketed, the gap between the green rhetoric of governments in the industrialised capitalist countries and their feeble policy response has become a chasm.
World warming even faster than thought
2010 is now thought to be the warmest year on record. Previously, the accelerated warming of the arctic was insufficiently taken into account by one of the main global temperature records. Now, new data paints a dramatic picture of our warming planet: due to a sharp rise in carbon dioxide output from industrial activity over the last two decades, the world is warming faster than we thought.
Oil exploration contracts means another “Great Giveaway” of natural resources
Dublin’s Socialist Party MEP, Paul Murphy, who was assaulted by members of the Garda Siochana last week while taking part in a peaceful sitdown protest in Rossport, Co. Mayo, has called the decision to approve new exploration licenses to gas companies reprehensible.
Paul Murphy MEP victim of Garda Brutality in Rossport
Dublin MEP Paul Murphy was part of a Socialist Party contingent on a peaceful protest organised by the community in Rossport and the Shell to Sea campaign today. At that protest he, and the other peaceful protesters were brutally assaulted by the Gardai. Here Paul Murphy reports on what happened.
