In 2009 a group of British trade unionists involved in the Campaign against Climate Change won the backing of four unions — CWU, PCS, TSSA and UCU — to publish a pamphlet, One Million Climate Jobs NOW!
Using information from supportive academics, the pamphlet argued the case for a single solution to the two great crises facing us today.
A new United Nations Synthesis Report on climate change makes grim reading, and despite attempts by various governements to skew its findings, it is unambiguous in its conclusions.
November saw the publication of the Synthesis Report for the fifth Assessment Report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
This presents the conclusions and policy recommendations that arise from three earlier reports by working groups on the causes of global warming, its current and potential impacts, and suggested solutions.
It is the most comprehensive and authoritative document on the subject yet published. It is also the most forthright statement made by the panel on the reality and risks of climate change.
The growing resistance to fracking - the "hydraulic fracturing" of deep level shale rocks to extract natural gas - promises to reignite the climate movement after years of demoralisation following the failure of the UN climate talks in 2009.
A feature of the recent march and blockades at Cuadrilla Resources' drilling site near Balcombe in West Sussex was the diversity of the people involved, as well as the numbers. Local residents were central to the protests, as they have been at Fylde, near Blackpool, where two Cuadrilla fracking operations led to minor earthquakes.
Merilyn Moos, Cressida, £9.99
"Salander embarks on a mission to uncover the brutal history of her family." This sentence from Viv Smith's review of The Girl Who Played With Fire (Books, Socialist Review, September 2010) might as readily be applied to Anna, the narrator and main character in Merilyn Moos's novel, but with two big additions.
I recently floated with comrades in my SWP district the idea of reviving the annual commemoration of the Paris Commune.
In the early years of the socialist movement the Commune commemoration, usually held in March, was the big event in their calendar, an occasion not just for remembering a key moment in our history, but also for discussing in an open and non-sectarian way the prospects for the movement from an international perspective.
