The environment

Stuff about nature etc.

We may be near tipping points

The 2023 State of the Climate report (Ripple et al. 2023) paints a bleak picture. A record-setting year, maybe the hottest globally in 100 thousand years.

Plans set for Drax 8-13 August

On 24-25 February Reclaim the Power held a national gathering of climate activists in York to plan a protest camp on 8-13 August at Drax Power Station (a former coal turned biomass power station). Reclaim the Power (RtP) is a network of climate activists who come together to organise protests and direct action against coal and biomass power stations. Beyond this they also campaign for social and economic justice (e.g. against the hostile environment for migrants, and against fuel poverty). RtP was founded in 2013 and since then has organised protest camps and actions against fracking, Didcot...

Make unions commit Labour to green and renewable energy!

Labour leader Keir Starmer’s 8 February U-turn on Labour’s £28 billion flagship green investment pledge has been justified on the grounds that it is incompatible with servicing the national debt. He wants to be seen to be scrabbling around after every last penny, lest the Tories label him imprudent. The national debt, with interest payments around £100 billion a year, is a genuine problem. Much of the debt is held outside the UK, so couldn’t be quelled even by full public ownership of high finance in the UK, and even a workers’ government might want to retain links with the international...

Social provision and market rules

Critical to the replacement of fossil-fuel energy by low-emissions electricity generation (renewables and nuclear) is the expansion of the electricity grid. Since Thatcher’s privatisation, the grid is run by private companies, with the prices they can charge for transmission regulated by an official body, Ofgem. Ofgem is now considering its next round of price controls, and says that it will use the com­pan­ies’ “investabil­ity” as a criterion. It will aim to ensure that the companies not only cover their costs, not only make tidy profits, but make profits lush and reliable enough that their...

“Fare Free London” campaign launches

On Saturday 10 February, the Stop Silvertown Tunnel Coalition met to discuss a campaign for free public transport in London. Over 50 people attended the meeting from a range of different campaigning organisations and unions. The provisional name of “Fare Free London” was decided for the campaign, and a steering committee was elected to carry out jobs between general meetings. Campaign ideas and actions were discussed, including a presence at the next London Assembly on 7 March. There was a consensus to make more links with transport unions in order to grow the campaign and make links with the...

Farmers’ protests sweep Europe

Farmers’ protests have subsided somewhat in France, following government concessions, but continue in many countries across Europe. They were sparked by new European Union rules which require a certain proportion of fallow land, crop rotations, and reduced fertiliser use. The EU is now stepping back. German farmers object to the phasing out of tax breaks on agricultural diesel; Netherlands farmers, to rules curbing nitrogen oxide and ammonia emissions. In Greece, fuel tax is a target; in Bulgaria, food imports from Ukraine. The French Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste ( Révolutionnaires ) reports...

Drax camp planned for 8-13 August

Reclaim The Power, a group in the tradition of the “climate camp” of 2006-09, is planning a protest camp at Drax power station, near Selby in North Yorkshire, on 8 to 13 August. Workers Liberty students and others will be part of it. If you want to join our contingent, email awl@workersliberty.org . There is a planning meeting in York on 24-25 February. Drax bosses claim that the power station is a pioneer in renewable energy, but it is not. The power station has been converted from coal to burning wood. The theory is that the wood can be taken from sustainable forests, which as new trees grow...

More notes on eco discussions

Disagreements within Workers’ Liberty on ecology are relatively slight. The key idea we bring to most interventions on ecology is the centrality of the working class. Capital’s insatiable drive for accumulation is both short-termist and tunnel-visioned. Longer term and wider considerations are secondary for corporations, the ruling class, and their states. That includes climate change and environmental consideration. The search for ever-greater profit brings capitalists in conflict with any restrictions or limits to profit, human and environmental. The transition away from fossil fuels, and to...

Socialism is not about “good old days”

French Trotskyists used to talk of “miserabilism” as a fault to be avoid. The then-mass French Communist Party, into the 1960s, had insisted that workers’ living standards in Western Europe were always going down, down, down. One sub-section of the French Trotskyists, even, long held it as dogma that “the productive forces” were continuously declining. Such sob-stuff is not true. And it amounts to telling workers both that all their organising, strikes, and protests could not avail, and that the old Marxist idea of capitalist development creating the basis for socialism is losing grip. Our...

From the Sahara to algal blooms

The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance by Dan Egan documents the history of humanity’s relationship with one of the essential building blocks of life and one of our most important natural resources. Phosphorus in its pure form is extremely reactive and combusts at around room temperature. It was first discovered by German alchemist Hennig Brandt in 1669, who stumbled upon it after conducting elaborate experiments involving boiling gallons of his own urine. Egan charts its use in war and detergent through to the irreplaceable role it now plays in feeding the world’s eight...

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