Over the last few weeks and months, a lot of politicians have come out and paid lip service to need to stop climate change, and with the election approaching it will probably continue. But will they act?

Just a glance at the government and opposition track records gives us a hint. Between 1990 and 2004 Fianna Fail, the PDs, Fine Gael and Labour have all been in government and pledged to limit C02 emissions. In fact, they increased by a whopping 23%.

Promises and action are two different things. Only immediate action will halt climate change, not hot air. This vital action will, however, cut into the profits of big business - the same companies which fund the main parties’ election campaigns.

For instance enforcing C02 cuts on the main polluters (factories and big business) would require them to accept lower profits for the sake of the world – something which makes no sense when profit maximisation is king.

Similarly massive investment in public transport and renewable energy that could have a huge impact in reducing emissions will not make sense to the establishment parties, which are all about reducing public spending. What is more likely is that they will continue to starve public transport and the ESB of the necessary funding.

What is needed is a genuine opposition, not just in the Dail, but on the streets. With a recent EPA report saying my home city of Limerick will be permanently flooded in my lifetime, along with other towns and cities around the country, this gets more vital every day.

How can climate change be stopped? Socialist Youth believes a global plan of action is needed to put the needs of people and the planet before the profits of the super rich elite. This will mean taking on the oil multinationals. Energy production and public transport must be rationally and democratically owned, controlled and planned by ordinary working class people not by the market and big business.

This obviously requires taking on capitalism and the rule of profit inherent in it. As James Connolly said: "We are moderate – we only want the earth!", maybe "we only want the earth to survive" would be an appropriate add-on today.

Over 100,000 people, mainly young people, will travel to Heiligendamm in Germany this June to show their opposition to the warmongering, anti-worker and anti-environmental policies of the G8.
 
The G8 Summit marks the yearly gathering of the leaders of the world's seven richest countries, plus Russia, to discuss how best to attack the wages and conditions of workers and young people and divide up the spoils of exploitation between them. 

The gap between rich and poor continues to grow, more than doubling in the 30 year existance of the G8 because their real aim is to maximise profits at whatever expense to young and working class people.  The real face of the G8 was shown, when the millions of ordinary people who supported the Make Poverty History campaign were given two fingers by the capitalist rulers of the G8, when they announced that they would wipe a few crumbs off the banquet tables for the world's poor in Gleneagles.  And even now, they still haven't lived up to what they promised!

The attacks are not just limited to those who live in the developing world but are part of a global assault on rights, wages and conditions, as the bosses try to squeeze more and more profits out of the working class.  The attempted introduction of the vicious CPE law, in France last year, which would have allowed employers to sack young workers at will, the war in Iraq and the huge environmental destruction caused by multinationals are just glimpses of the future to come, if we don't discard the capitalist system. 

If capitalism cannot provide a decent standard of living and a world free of war and exploitation, then we can't afford capitalism! Our only alternative is a socialist world, where workers and young people democratically decide on how to use the world's resources for their needs and interests, not for the profits of the few.

G8 leaders… Bush Under George Bush the US has seen democratic rights come under attack and imperialist wars being waged for profit. His crimes include Guantanamo Bay, the disastrous handling of hurricane Katrina and unlawfully spying on US citizens  to name just a few.  But the crime history will not forget is the criminal invasion of Iraq. A war fought for oil and based on lies. While private contractors reap the money, the country is left to fall into civil war. Putin Vladimir Putin’s state is an extremely curtailed democracy. Opposition to the government is not tolerated as demonstrated by the brutal treatment of anti-government protesters. Putin has waged a brutal war against the people of Chechnya, who want independence, and put in power a man accused of abduction, torture and murder of suspected rebels opposed to Moscow. Blair Tony Blair is a staunch neo-liberal who went into Iraq like Bush for big business and oil. In Britain he has been awarding peerages to business men in return for secret loans. Tony Blair’s crackdown on youth, for example ASBOs, and the unfair trials of suspected terrorists has meant the erosion of civil liberties.

Debt - killing the world’s poor

At the 2005 G8 summit in Edinburgh, massive protests of ordinary people demanded the cancellation of third world debt. In reality nothing has changed - only 18 out of 153 underdeveloped countries received partial debt relief and debt continues to cripple the "third world".

Sub-Saharan Africa, where life expectancy is on average 46, repays $30 million of debt a day to Western governments and big business. For every $1 billion these countries receive in aid, $9 billion is paid out in debt. Any debt relief that is provided is often linked to the willingness of the country’s government to sell off their resources to profit-hungry multinational corporations.  

We live in a world where one third of humanity live on less than $2 dollars a day and 3,000 children die daily due to poverty. It is disgusting that the world’s poorest countries are spending money on repaying debt rather than providing basic necessities such as healthcare and sanitation.

Despite all of Bush and Blair’s hypocritical rhetoric about "saving Africa" the G8 has shown itself to be acting solely in the interests of its big business backers.

Go to G8 with Socialist Youth

International Socialist Resistance, the international youth group to which Socialist Youth is affiliated, is organising a camp at the G8 to bring young people from all across Europe, to Rostock, to protest against the G8 summit along with thousands of other young people and workers.  As well as going to the main demonstration, we will be attending a number of smaller demonstrations and alternative summits and holding political workshops at our camp, where we can discuss the socialist alternative to capitalism and war. 

If you're interested in coming along for the week from June 1st - 9th or even just for the weekend from June 1st – 4th, contact Socialist Youth at 0871274315.

The G8 is taking place in the context of Bush and Blair’s ongoing occupation of Iraq, which has been a disaster for the Iraqi people. 655,000 Iraqis and over 3,000 US soldiers have died since the invasion began.

The occupation has unleashed a wave of sectarian violence which is tearing the country apart. Poverty and unemployment have significantly increased with one in five Iraqis living on less than $1 a day.

Atrocities such as the massacre of civilians by US troops at Haditha and the brutal torture at Abu-Ghraib prison have exposed the coalition’s lies about “democracy” and “liberation.” The war and occupation were always about the interests of big business, particularly the oil industry, and increasing the power of US Imperialism. Iraq is being "rebuilt" not in the interests of Iraqi workers and peasants but in the interest of multinational corporations.

This occupation has lost all support in Iraq and internationally. 82% of Iraqis are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops. In the US a majority now support the withdrawal of US troops and Bush’s popularity has plummeted.

All those opposed to the occupation should use the G8 as an opportunity to make their voices heard and demand the removal of all US and British troops from Iraq.

Socialist Youth is the youth wing of the Socialist Party. We have campaigned and helped organise young people on a whole number of issues, such as fighting for the rights of young workers, opposing wars for oil and profit, the destruction of our environment and the deportation of school students.

We believe that all the main parties standing in this election represent the interests of the wealthy and big business. For example, none of them will be prepared to end the exemptions in the minimum wage legislation which means that young people will sometimes get only 70-90% of what other workers are paid for the same amount of work.

The capitalist profit system offers no future to young people here in Ireland and internationally, only a race to the bottom in wages and conditions, war and environmental destruction. We stand for the creation of a democratic socialist society where the needs of working and young people are prioritised rather the profits of a wealthy minority. This means for example getting rid of the obscene $1 trillion which is spent on the arms trade each year. This is enough to provide every family on the planet with $1,000 each year.

Socialist Youth believes young people have a decisive role to play in the struggle for democratic socialist change. If you want to fight back, then join Socialist Youth today!

One of the main reasons I got involved with Socialist Youth was because of my own experience in the health service when my mother was in hospital. I saw that the conditions in the hospital were a disgrace.

My mother was on a trolley for a whole night. After she got a bed they eventually discharged her without doing a proper scan on her lung which she needed because of her breathing problems. This experience showed to me that for people who couldn’t afford private healthcare there wasn’t a public system in place to care for them. SY is an organisation that isn’t pro-rich or pro-big business and its good to get involved with that kind of politics.