Features

Hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’ – Big Oil’s newest way to extract natural gas from an exhausted planet – comes with a terrible environmental price tag. Joyce Nelson digs deeper.

An epic migration to the cities has been responsible for China’s turbocharged economic performance. But, as Richard Swift explains, the cost for many workers has been too great and they refuse to be quiet any longer.

Three personal stories of the battles being fought for workers’ rights.

As the ripples of rebellion spread through the Arab world, what’s next for democracy?

Beware Americans talking ‘stability’, warns Noam Chomsky.

Electronics giant Foxconn employs over a million people in China – in conditions that drive them to despair, reports Jenny Chan.

Esme McAvoy is in the Amazon to find out what’s happening to the Yasuní proposal.

Cartoonist Polyp explores conspiracy theories and finds them not just dotty but dangerous.

The Great Recession may have stunned the Minority World, but the Majority World has survived more or less unscathed. David Ransom investigates why, and traces the outlines of a future that might just be worth having.

India may be one of the world’s current economic ‘winners’ but inequality is its fastest-growing sector, reveals Jaideep Hardikar.

Dirty cash and dirty tricks – our rogues’ gallery of lobbyists who get governments to dance to their tune.

Who shapes the policies and laws that govern us? If you think the answer is ‘our elected politicians’, read on. Vanessa Baird examines the secretive but expanding power of corporate lobbying.

The facts and figures of party funding, lobbying and the big names involved.

Why do so many journalists beat the drums of war and peddle propaganda?

Communities across Europe are already living the alternatives, discover Isabelle Fremeaux and John Jordan

What will it be like to live in a zero carbon world? George Marshall encourages us to look to the past to find out.

Can we make the transition to a fossil-free future? Jess Worth meets the people who say we can.

The facts and figures of energy emission, consumption and reduction.

As Burma’s people go to the polls this month in an election which is unlikely to change decades of military rule, Becky Palmstrom looks at how the urban poor survive in a country without working banks.

Put environmental villains in the dock, says campaigner Polly Higgins.