Derek Wall

With Italy being the latest European country to reject nuclear power in a June 12-13 referendum, a coalition of anti-nuclear groups in Britain has announced plans to hold a mass non-violent blockade of Hinkley Point nuclear power station on October 3.

The plant, near Bridgwater in Somerset, is expected to be the site of the first new nuclear power station.

Hundreds of campaigners are expected to take part in Gandhi-style civil disobedience, risking arrest by blockading the access road to the site in protest over the threat posed by nuclear power.

The recent figures on CO₂ emissions are sobering. Despite the fact that the world has suffered a terrible recession, emissions are still rising.

In essence, all the efforts to tackle climate change have simply slowed the rise a little rather than reverse it.

The problem is that the solutions to climate change put forward at international conferences like Copenhagen and Cancun dare not deal with the real root cause of climate change — our current economic system.

The historian William Cronon has been in the news recently in the US because of assaults on his civil liberties and academic freedom by the Wisconsin Republican Party.

This story is likely to be of interest to Green Left Weekly readers because of the collision between university research and powerful corporate interests.
 
However, Cronon's work as an environmental historian since the 1970s means that he deserves to be read by all those who take an interest in environmental issues and ecosocialist politics.
 

About 500,000 people marched in London on March 26 against the British government’s program of huge spending cuts.

Called by the Trade Union Congress (TUC), the march drew people from every part of Britain — a splendid cross section of the country with numbers dominated by the working class.

Thousands also marched in Belfast against the spending cuts. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) said 6000 people took part in the rally in front of City Hall.

A rebellion is developing across Britain in the face of huge spending cuts by the Conservative Party-Liberal Democrat coalition government.

The scale of the cuts is huge. The government is seeking to privatise huge swathes of the economy and hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs are under threat.

They have also cut corporation tax, but sharply increased the goods and services VAT tax from 17.5% to 20%, which hits those on lower incomes hardest.

By changing the inflation measure used to determine benefits and pensions, the government is plunging more people into poverty.

In 2009, more than a 100 activists were arrested in a swoop on a community centre in Nottingham in an operation involving hundreds of police.

They were alleged to be planning to close down Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. It was revealed that one of the organisers of the alleged protest, Mark Stone, was an undercover cop who had tipped off the police.

Stone was unveiled after his partner found a passport in his real name of Mark Kennedy. He was confronted by Camp for Climate Action activists and confessed all.

Ecology & Socialism
By Chris Williams
Haymarket, 2009
www.ecologyandsocialism.org

United States activist Chris William’s new book, published by Haymarket Press, is an excellent introduction to ecology and socialism. It is well written and, despite being a long-time ecosocialist activist, I learnt a lot from it.

Williams is a professor of physics and chemistry at Pace University, and chair of the science department at Packer Collegiate Institute. He is a green activist and a member of the International Socialist Organization.

Mumia Abu-Jamal — on death row for more than 30 years in Pennsylvania for a murder he didn't commit — is an iconic figure. Yet while the struggle for his freedom continues, less attention is given to his role as a political leader.

While Mumia has not, to my knowledge, used the term ecosocialist, his passionate message to the US Social Forum on June 22 had a clear ecosocialist content.

Inside the Revolution: A Journey into the Heart of Venezuela
Directed by Pablo Navarrete

On March 7, the second Campaign Against Climate Change UK Trade Union Conference was scheduled to be held in London, bringing together activists from left groups such as Socialist Resistance, the Green Party and Respect, as well as rank-and-file trade unionists and officials.