We need a new world...quickly

Climate change campaigners have set up a campsite in the grounds of the Scottish Parliament. Extinction Rebellion Scotland said the Holyrood Rebel Camp was their "biggest ever gathering" and would remain on the site for the next five days. Organisers said the camp would see "non-violent direct action" in Edinburgh with various workshops and events taking place for those on the Holyrood site.

They are calling on the Scottish government to do more in response to what they call a "climate crisis and ecological breakdown". Politicians are due to discuss the climate bill in Holyrood this week.

Lauren McGlynn, an activist, said: "Extinction Rebellion Scotland have decided to put up this camp outside of the Scottish Parliament to try to put pressure on the government to give us the best possible climate bill. Currently the climate bill they are considering is based on the Committee on Climate Change report, which at best gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5C, and it's based on a bunch of techno-fixes that haven't been proven and are yet to be invented."

Our task as socialists is to advocate for radical change and to further undermine the shaky foundations of capitalism, to challenge its ideas while encouraging the majority to cease propping up this system, and instead to go forward to a money-free, wageless, state-free and class-free global society. In socialism there won’t be any profit-seeking capitalist enterprises to regulate; just democratically-run productive units producing, in an ecologically and socially acceptable way, what people need. 

When we consider the future of the planet we are faced with two choices. People can continue to support the defenders of capitalism and acquiesce in the destruction of the environment or stand in the way by joining the struggle for socialism and the end of a system that will prioritise profit over not only humanity's well-being but the planet we live in. But, don’t wait until your home is deep in water or the fields dry and arid to make up your mind. Think hard now. Capitalism, and all that comes with it, the worsening of every environmental problem, or socialism, a world community that places control of the Earth in the safe hands of a global majority who will tend to it with respect and without the barriers profit places in the path of production.