Socialist Appeal - Science and Technology

Science and Technology

Who’s to Blame for Climate Change: ‘consumerism’ or capitalism?

By Adam Booth
Monday, 15 February 2010
In the previous few months, we have attempted to show how capitalist ‘solutions’ to climate change, such as market-based methods like carbon trading, are not able to combat the environmental problems facing humanity and our planet. Similarly, international treaties that attempt to operate within the confines of capitalism are also doomed to failure, as was seen in Copenhagen last year. Capitalism cannot solve these problems – capitalism is the problem.

Corporate Media: A Ruling Class Tool

By Antonio Bâlmer (www.marxist.com)
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
In the society in which we currently find ourselves, class society, a small minority of the population holds ownership and control over industry, banks and all major means for producing wealth. Because we, the workers, do not get to enjoy this wealth, although we create it, our lives are reduced to working for wages that disappear when we pay the bills. How does the ruling class keep us putting up with such a lifestyle? One way is the fact that the ruling class’s ideology permeates contemporary culture and dominates the media.

Collapse of the Climate Summit – where to now?

By Frederik Ohsten in Copenhagen Friday, 18 December 2009 Print
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
The dramatic collapse of the talks at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen serves to highlight one thing: the capitalist governments of the world cannot solve burning issues, such as damage to the environment provoked by the anarchy of the market. The thirst for profit is in direct contradiction to the interests of the working people of the world. Social revolution on a global scale is the only real answer to the problem.

The “Copenhagen Accord” - all hot air

By Adam Booth
Monday, 21 December 2009
At 5.30am on Saturday 19^th December, after almost two weeks of negotiations, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen ended with an almost universal agreement that the summit had been a complete failure.

Fight against climate catastrophe

By Socialistisk Standpunkt
Friday, 11 December 2009
As the climate change "summit" continues in Copenhapen, we reproduce here an English translation of a leaflet produced by Marxists in Denmark for a demonstration last Saturday

Capitalism, Carbon Trading and Copenhagen

By Adam Booth
Sunday, 29 November 2009
From 7^th to 18^th December 2009, delegates from 192 countries will be gathering in Copenhagen, Denmark, in order to create a new, “legally-binding”, global treaty on climate change. The UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (known as COP15) marks the culmination of two-years of negotiation to try and generate a replacement for the Kyoto protocol, which is due to expire in 2012.

‘Transitional Communities’ - a dead end for the environment

By Andy Fenwick
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
At a recent meeting of a local Labour Party Branch in Worcester, a slick high tech presentation was given by a group called Transition Worcester, who said they had the answer to the environmental crisis. It is to turn the clock back 200 years to a mythical age where all trade was local and people enjoyed the benefit of locally grown meat, fruit & veg. Within this presentation were ideas such as we should no longer trade with developing countries and we should therefore export our unemployment to the third world.

Capitalism Versus Science

By Mike Palecek
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
We are constantly bombarded with the myth that capitalism drives innovation, technology, and scientific advancement. But in fact, the precise opposite is true. Capitalism is holding back every aspect of human development, and science and technology is no exception.

Sweeping Our Emissions Under the Carpet: Is Carbon Capture a Silver Bullet?

By Adam Booth

Saturday, 30 May 2009

Earlier this year, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband ended years of silence from the Government as to how they are going to address the issue of climate change, and how they plan to replace Britain's aging power plants, many of which are nearing the end of their lifetime, threatening to plunge the country into darkness due to a lack of electricity. The Government's answer lies in a technology called "Carbon Capture and Storage", or CCS, which they claim will be the silver bullet that simultaneously kills the problems of global warming and national energy supply.

This article raises some concerns about CCS as part of the ongoing discussion inside the Labour movement about socialism and our natural resources.We welcome any comments on this contribution and the issues it raises.

Exxon Valdez: corporate greed and environmental catastrophe

By Daniel Read
Monday, 20 April 2009
On 23rd March 1989 the oil tanker Exxon Valdez left normal shipping lanes and smashed into the Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Within hours, the once mighty vessel had spilled over ten million gallons of oil into the icy waters: the largest oil spill in ever recorded in US waters.Over the coming months, around eleven thousand square miles of open sea became contaminated. Local wildlife - many species of which were rare or endangered elsewhere - perished in vast quantities. News reports brought back footage of over 1,300 miles of shoreline turned black and scattered with dead or dying fish, birds, and seals.

Audio File: Marxism and Darwinism’ at the ULU Marxist Society

By Josh Holroyd, ULU Marxist Society President
Monday, 23 March 2009
At 6pm, on the 12th of March the Marxist society of the University of London Union met for a discussion on ‘Marxism and Darwinism’. The topic of this meeting was chosen in order to coincide with the recent exhibitions and publicity surrounding the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s masterwork, ‘Origin of the Species’ in November this year, and John Pickard, author of “150th anniversary of publication of Origin of the Species” led off for the first time (at a political meeting) for 15 years before a meeting of about fifteen people, comprising students, Socialist Appeal supporters and other interested people. Includes audio of the meeting.

Darwin's Untimely Burial

By Stephen Jay Gould in 1976
Friday, 20 March 2009
This interesting article by Stephen Jay Gould was originally written for Natural History in October 1976.

Darwin’s challenge

By John Pickard
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
February 12th 2009 saw the 200th anniversary Charles Darwin’s birth. In November we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of his most famous book, Origin of the Species. The beautifully simple idea embodied in it – evolution by natural selection – was a revolutionary departure with profound scientific and philosophical implications.

Darwin’s challenge

By John Pickard
Friday, 13 February 2009
February 12th 2009 saw the 200th anniversary Charles Darwin’s birth.. The beautifully simple idea embodied in his most famous book, Origin of the Species – evolution by natural selection – was a revolutionary departure with profound scientific and philosophical implications. Following the footsteps of Copernicus and Galileo three hundred years earlier, Darwin battered an enormous, irreparable breech in the walls of Fortress Theology and for that reason the book has been the source of intense debate right up to the present day. Darwin sought and found an explanation – a mechanism – for the evolutionary changes in species, which other scientists were beginning to suspect, using a purely materialist method, without any recourse to God or metaphysics.

Big business loots carbon trading scheme

By Fred McDowell
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
The European Union set up an Emissions Trading Scheme as a market solution to deal with pollution. Pollution is of course, overwhelmingly generated by big business (‘market’) activities. Now the scheme has turned around to bite them.As a result of the crisis, polluting companies have found themselves strapped for cash. So they’ve cashed in their carbon credits for short term readies.