The collapse of the talks at the Hague has brought the issue of global warming back into the headlines. Mick Brooks looks at the reasons for the collapse of the talks, the failures of the Kyoto agreement, the responsibility of capitalism in the destruction of the environment and the need for a socialist alternative.

"According to the defenders of capitalism and the "free market", socialism in general and marxism in particular is all but dead and buried. However it may be instructive to examine one of the main environmental problems created by the free market, namely global warming. This has been described as the greatest disaster facing humankind, not to mention a myriad of other species! The question is can the capitalist system find a global solution?".