Climate change

Extinction Rebellion (XR)’s “Big One” plans action and workshops across London on 21-24 April: details here . This is the first XR action where there are no official plans for road blockades and civil disobedience. XR activists hope that veering away from their previous “maximum arrests” tactic will broaden their appeal, and more than 200 organisations are now supporting the event including the PCS civil service union. On Friday and Monday, XR plans “people’s pickets” of all major governmental departments. These “pickets” have been billed as a way to lobby civil servants and decision-makers on...

After nearly two decades of talks, the UN has agreed a treaty to protect the high seas from overfishing, shipping and extractive industry. The High Seas Treaty is the latest and potentially the most extensive curb on maritime capitalism to date. Although the treaty is very limited due to the commitment of the world’s capitalist states to the growth of fishing, mining and shipping capital, it is a significant step forward. Until recently, the seas have been treated as both inexhaustible resource tap and infinite waste dump. But this illusion is becoming difficult to sustain as the ocean...

Workers’ Liberty exists to catalyse workers’ struggle and organisation so we can replace capitalist direction of our labour by the “free association of producers”, democratically coordinated to social and environmental purpose. Part of that is workers’ plans for the ecological crisis. In recent months, North Sea offshore workers have devised a plan to shut down the oil and gas wells and use their skills and plant to build offshore wind and tidal power. This will require public ownership not only of the fossil fuel industry but also the ports and surrounding infrastructure. We work for the...

See a reply to this in the comments . Kohei Saito’s eagerly anticipated new book, Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism (Cambridge University Press, 2023) will likely gain a wider readership. Ultimately, Saito’s book is disappointing, promising a new version of Marx, but instead reading back badly-formulated contemporary ideas. The book demonstrates that even when starting from solid premises, it is still possible to go wildly astray. Saito deservedly won many plaudits for his first book, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism (2017) – reviewed in Solidarity 523 (30 October 2019)...

Private jets are something like ten times more carbon-emitting than normal commercial flights and fifty times more than trains. They are a significant part of the reason that half the emissions from aviation are caused by the activity of 1% of the world’s population - almost entirely the extremely wealthy. Despite European governments’ professions of concern about climate change, private jet flights taking off in Europe increased by 64% last year, with emissions from them more than doubling to over 3m tonnes of CO2. As in so many bad things, the UK leads the way. Here the number of flights...

North Sea oil workers have done something that no government or fossil fuel company has even attempted: they have devised a plan for shutting down the oil fields and transitioning to renewable energy. The Our Power report has emerged from a coalition of environmental groups and trade unions working closely with offshore workers. The plan involves investment in retraining and infrastructure so that oil rigs can be decommissioned in the UK and we can build the wind and marine energy we need for the future. The collaboration between workers and environmentalists started with a survey organised by...

The openDemocracy website has revealed how Sadiq Khan’s London administration worked with a security firm to target youth climate change campaigners, seemingly spying on them. When supporters of left-wing group Green New Deal Rising tried to attend an event at the O2 to challenge the mayor over his environmentally damaging Silvertown Tunnel project, security not only barred them but already knew their names. Both the Silvertown Tunnel itself and this latest information are yet more reasons for the London labour movement to call Sadiq Khan to account. • openDemocracy report here

Without immediate emergency measures, one of the Western Hemisphere’s keystone ecosystems is at risk of collapse. The Great Salt Lake in Utah, USA, has lost 73% of its water since 1860 and scientists have warned “without a dramatic increase in water flow to the lake in 2023 and 2024, its disappearance could cause immense damage to Utah’s public health, environment, and economy.” The saline lake provides habitat for ten million migratory birds and is the only significant body of water in North America’s most arid region. It is running dry mostly due to local farmers extracting water from...

Shell made £32.2 billion profit last year, double last year's total. BP made £23 billion. A big chunk of these profits comes from the £60 +billion household energy-bill relief scheme, which has provided insufficient support for the poorest this winter whilst securing vast profits for energy companies. That £60+ billion has been added to the government's £2.5 trillion debt leading to screaming headlines in the right wing press calling for further cuts to public services and working-class living standards. From its £32.2 billion Shell paid out just £134 million on "windfall tax" or 0.3%. BP paid...

On 4 February 250 people protested in Bristol following a High Court ruling to allow Bristol Airport to expand, dismissing campaigners’ appeal. This ruling is a blow both to local democracy and to the climate. The local councils have repeatedly rejected the expansion, but have been overruled by central government. The government’s own advisors, the Climate Change Committee, have advised against net airport expansion. No- or low-emission flying is not viable on any scale in the near future — despite green-washing claims — so any serious attempt to curb climate change must seek to restrict, not...