Yale Global Initiative on Climate Change and Public Health Ethics: “Should we break the law to save the world?: Civil disobedience in the climate change movement”
June 26, 2023Dr. Oscar Berglund joined YCCCH to discuss civil disobedience in climate change activism.
Speaker:
Dr. Oscar Berglund, Lecturer in International Public and Social Policy, University of Bristol
March 6, 2023
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- 10081
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Transcript
- 00:00<v ->All right.</v>
- 00:02Good afternoon everyone,
- 00:02and welcome to our seminar today.
- 00:04Thank you so much for joining us.
- 00:06It's great to see you all,
- 00:08and I think Amanda Millstein has the profile
- 00:13that is perfectly fitting for our session today,
- 00:16Climate Health Now.
- 00:18My name is Laura Bothwell.
- 00:19I'm with the Yale Center for Climate Change and Health
- 00:23with the Global Initiative on Climate Change
- 00:25and Public Health Ethics.
- 00:28And today we are just thrilled
- 00:30to be featuring Dr. Oscar Berglund.
- 00:34He's a lecturer in international, public and social policy
- 00:37at the University of Bristol,
- 00:39where he is joining us from today.
- 00:42He's a critical political economist,
- 00:44researching climate activism.
- 00:46He explores why, how, and to what effect
- 00:49activists use disruptive forms of protests.
- 00:52He also researches different converging and clashing visions
- 00:55in the climate movement of how societies, economies,
- 00:58and political systems may need to change.
- 01:01Dr. Berglund is the author of,
- 01:03"Extinction Rebellion and Climate Change Activism,"
- 01:07and contributes to debates about climate activism
- 01:09across various academic disciplines
- 01:11in international media and with activist groups.
- 01:15So we're so grateful for him
- 01:17to take the time to speak with us today.
- 01:21The seminar itself will be approximately 40 minutes,
- 01:24and then we'll have an option at the end
- 01:27for a conversation of Q&A.
- 01:29So with no further ado, I'll turn it over to Dr. Berglund.
- 01:34<v ->Thank you very much, Laura,</v>
- 01:36and thank you very much for having me.
- 01:38It's a great honor to be speaking to Yale.
- 01:42You know, it's a big deal and yeah, I'm not,
- 01:47I haven't spoken to American audiences that many times,
- 01:50so it's great to do that.
- 01:55So, yeah, I'll just crack on.
- 01:56So basically, I didn't know exactly what kind of composition
- 01:58of audience I was expecting here today,
- 02:01so I kind of presume that it's largely academic,
- 02:04but not necessarily the kind of political theory stuff
- 02:09that often ask these questions about, you know,
- 02:12I was asked to address
- 02:13kind of the ethics of civil disobedience,
- 02:16and I chose to put it as, you know,
- 02:17should we break the law to save the world?
- 02:19Which is partly an ethical question,
- 02:21but it's also, you know,
- 02:22one of politics and strategy and when it's wise to do so.
- 02:28So, I might get onto those questions a little bit later on,
- 02:33and that might be more interesting
- 02:35for those who are on the more activist side,
- 02:39which I did see some extinction value signs
- 02:43and so on in the amongst you.
- 02:45But if we first sort of address the question of ethics,
- 02:49then you can see the most kind of stringent version of that,
- 02:54of literature that looks at whether we should break the law
- 02:59when it's okay to break the law as part of protest.
- 03:02It comes from John Rawls
- 03:03And John Rawls really wrote, you know,
- 03:04in the early seventies, late sixties about this
- 03:07and he was part of a set of literature
- 03:12that grew around the US Civil Rights movement
- 03:15that was kind of there to justify that movement.
- 03:20But and in a way that would kind of make it,
- 03:25I suppose, appeal to a broader audience,
- 03:27then try to figure out when is it,
- 03:29when is it okay to break the law as part of protest?
- 03:33And he wasn't obviously
- 03:36the first person to write about civil disobedience,
- 03:38but he certainly has been the most important one
- 03:41and the one that has lasted, you know,
- 03:45it's almost anybody who works on civil disobedience
- 03:48has to relate themselves to Rawls in one way or another.
- 03:52Obviously, a lot of you work on ethics,
- 03:54so you will no doubt be familiar with Rawls' other writings,
- 03:59but about civil disobedience.
- 04:01I mean, he defines it as a public, non-violent,
- 04:03non-violent conscientious,
- 04:04yet political act contrary to law,
- 04:07but usually done with aim of bringing about
- 04:09a change in the law or policies of the government.
- 04:12So as such, it is a very kind of liberal framing.
- 04:16Obviously, you know, Rawls is a liberal theorist,
- 04:19and it is quite reformist in that sense.
- 04:23And famously the whole "Theory of Justice"
- 04:27is written about nearly perfect,
- 04:29I can't remember the cover he uses,
- 04:31but a nearly just democratic society.
- 04:36And a lot of what he's saying is about
- 04:40framing civil disobedience as something
- 04:44that is legitimate to do.
- 04:46And maintaining that legitimacy
- 04:48is what what is kind of theorizing is all about.
- 04:52And I think there's two aspects particularly
- 04:55that are really important in Rawls
- 04:58and that are really important to see how
- 05:01that movements today always have to kind of relate to.
- 05:07And those are the last resort and fidelity to law.
- 05:12And it is to show that if you're going to break the law,
- 05:15if you're gonna annoy people, if you're gonna sit in a road,
- 05:18if you're gonna do, you know, even slightly less nonviolent,
- 05:24if you're gonna break windows or do something
- 05:26that is outside of the law
- 05:29that's gonna annoy people or people who own property,
- 05:34then you need to show that doing so
- 05:36is a last resort that he exhausted
- 05:41and he defines it as exhausting other means
- 05:44of doing what you want.
- 05:45But I think for the climate change question,
- 05:49this last resort takes on another meaning, right?
- 05:51Like, we know that this is, you know,
- 05:54time is running out out there,
- 05:56and we are heading in the wrong direction.
- 05:59You know, emissions are not decreasing, they are increasing.
- 06:03And we know that we are up against time
- 06:09in saving what we can save.
- 06:12So in that sense, the discourses of a lot of these movements
- 06:15that practice civil disobedience
- 06:17for action against climate change,
- 06:21obviously draw very heavily on this kind of last resort
- 06:25that it is and credibly so.
- 06:28I think that it's very difficult.
- 06:29Well, it's difficult to contradict people
- 06:36who say that it is a lost resort,
- 06:40and then you have the fidelity to law.
- 06:44So it says that not only does it need to be last resort,
- 06:47but we need to do to practice civil disobedience
- 06:50within an overall fidelity to law.
- 06:53And that's what really sort of emphasized
- 06:55the kind of liberal aspects of this as, you know,
- 06:58it's reformist, it's within the state,
- 07:00it's within the system as it is.
- 07:02It's not something that tries to revolutionize the system
- 07:06and what that the obligations that then get put on
- 07:10to the practitioners of civil disobedience
- 07:12is that it needs to be done in the open.
- 07:14It needs to be done in a kind of conscientious way.
- 07:17You cannot be masked when you do it,
- 07:19and you need to accept the legal consequences
- 07:21of what you do.
- 07:24And I think that's very much along the lines
- 07:27of the kind of disobedience that Extinction Rebellion
- 07:30started practicing in the UK
- 07:33and that also that the groups that have come out
- 07:35of Extinction Rebellion and you know,
- 07:38so Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain
- 07:40and all the other groups in,
- 07:42well, around Europe, particularly
- 07:45that have emerged in different countries
- 07:48right now do practice it in
- 07:52that kind of open and conscientious way.
- 07:56But that's fidelity to law,
- 07:57that kind of arrest focus and you know,
- 08:00like this imagery of being carried away
- 08:03and facing the course of the law
- 08:06also means a kind of sacrifice.
- 08:09And that has been important for legitimacy, right?
- 08:13So because the people that are involved in these movements
- 08:18seldom are the ones that are hardest hit
- 08:21by climate change in here and now, right?
- 08:25We know the membership of these groups
- 08:28tend to be quite well educated,
- 08:31tend to be quite white and tends to be quite middle class,
- 08:36so are not at the brunt
- 08:39of climate change in the here and now.
- 08:42Therefore, because they are not the ones
- 08:45that are worse affected by the problem,
- 08:48they kind of need to show a level of sacrifice
- 08:51in order to be listened to,
- 08:54in order to be kind of legitimate voices in this.
- 08:58Now we then, you know, if that was what kind of,
- 09:03if fidelity to law and last resort
- 09:06was kind of the Rawlsian one
- 09:09and understand that was a very stringent view
- 09:11of when it's okay to use civil disobedience.
- 09:14Then the kind of political theory literature
- 09:16about civil disobedience has moved a long way since then.
- 09:20And this is one, the picture book is a recent edited book
- 09:27that takes up a lot of different aspects there.
- 09:30Where will the kind of current,
- 09:31a lot of the current big writers about civil disobedience
- 09:34in general or have written chapters.
- 09:38So what some of the points that they raised
- 09:41kind of against rules is that,
- 09:43well, we don't live in a nearly just society.
- 09:45So a lot of what Rawls says can't really be taken.
- 09:49You know, his kind of quite limited perspective
- 09:52of when it's okay to break the law
- 09:54can't really be taken that seriously
- 09:56or we can't be limited by that
- 09:57because we don't live in the nearly just society
- 10:00that Rawls presumes.
- 10:04So instead they, you know,
- 10:06a lot of these author ask about,
- 10:07well, what are our political obligations to whom?
- 10:11And you know, obviously with that
- 10:13they don't accept a kind of limited view of,
- 10:16you know, that you have to follow the law, right?
- 10:19But ask when, under what circumstances
- 10:24do we need to follow the law?
- 10:25And who do we owe political obligations to?
- 10:30And when you look at the way that, for example,
- 10:32Extinction Rebellion frame this,
- 10:34you know, they frame it around
- 10:35kind of having a social contract
- 10:37that has been broken by the states and so on.
- 10:39And then you can ask,
- 10:40did we ever have the kind of social contract
- 10:43is also quite a liberal kind of theory.
- 10:46So was there ever a social contract?
- 10:50And if so has it been been broken?
- 10:53But that kind of language of social contract
- 10:57is one that we see Extinction Rebellion particularly
- 11:00uses quite a lot.
- 11:02And one aspect from this literature also that comes up is,
- 11:07does disobedience have to be civil?
- 11:09So what do we mean by civil?
- 11:11Well, civil tends to mean nonviolent.
- 11:14And then where do we draw the line
- 11:15of what's violent and nonviolent?
- 11:19And there's others for example,
- 11:25throwing soup at a Van Gogh painting would presumably not,
- 11:29it's not necessarily violent,
- 11:30but would probably be seen as non civil as in, you know,
- 11:34it's not just about displaying your,
- 11:38kind of like you are after
- 11:40the kind of shock element if you do that,
- 11:43which would probably be seen as uncivil by many.
- 11:48So under what circumstances do you have to keep
- 11:51to those kind of rules of civility?
- 11:57Now the other kind of set of political theory literature
- 12:00that looks at the ethics,
- 12:02particularly of civil disobedience is anarchist literature.
- 12:06And I mean, since I started studying these things,
- 12:10I have become much more of an anarchist myself.
- 12:13I'm not an anarchist,
- 12:14but I learned much more about anarchism
- 12:19and the kind of values and so on that it was,
- 12:23and it is actually quite interesting literature to get into.
- 12:26It's obviously something that is very far out there
- 12:32in terms of most academic literature.
- 12:37But it is definitely worthwhile
- 12:39when you ask questions about
- 12:40should we break the law to save the world?
- 12:43Anarchism certainly has a lot to say about it.
- 12:46And what anarchists' literature says is that,
- 12:48well, what they don't talk about civil disobedience,
- 12:52they talk about direct action.
- 12:54And direct action doesn't necessarily have to be illegal,
- 12:59and it doesn't necessarily have to be nonviolent either,
- 13:02but what it should be always, it's prefigurative.
- 13:06So what does that mean?
- 13:08Well, that means prefigurative is kind of when you try to,
- 13:12is when the means and the ends are congruent.
- 13:16So you should be trying to create the future
- 13:20that you want on a smaller scale here and now.
- 13:24So these kind of prefigurative values were very strong,
- 13:27for example, in the Occupy movement.
- 13:30And it's about, you know, how do we relate to each other?
- 13:32How do we make decisions and that that should be in a way
- 13:35that is in the kind of society
- 13:37that we would like in the future.
- 13:41And I don't know if any of you
- 13:43have been watching "The Last of Us,"
- 13:44for example, lately on TV.
- 13:46It's a big, it's a big deal here.
- 13:49But what I would see as the kind of,
- 13:52for me, anarchist socialist community that they have
- 13:57in a kind of one of the apocalyptic scenarios,
- 14:00there would certainly be a kind of figurative way
- 14:04of organizing society.
- 14:06What it means with,
- 14:09in terms of civil disobedience
- 14:11is then that what you do should not be just symbolic.
- 14:15So throwing soup at a Van Gogh painting
- 14:20would not be particularly prefigurative.
- 14:22There is nothing that links
- 14:24the action of wanting drastic action on climate change
- 14:28and having a painting that is a few hundred years old
- 14:33covered by soup, right?
- 14:34So there's nothing,
- 14:36so there's no congruency there
- 14:41between the means and the ends,
- 14:42nor necessarily is public disruption of the kind that,
- 14:47you know, you sit on a road somewhere if you, close up,
- 14:51you try to make a car free city central,
- 14:54so then you can argue that
- 14:55maybe that's a little bit more prefigurative
- 14:58because you're kind of trying
- 14:59to create a society without cars,
- 15:03but probably sitting on a motorway
- 15:06is not that prefigurative.
- 15:10So it should go beyond the symbolic
- 15:12and it should not be consequentialist.
- 15:14And you can argue that that's kind of
- 15:16when you sit on a motorway and well,
- 15:18when you are disrupting the public,
- 15:21you are doing so in order to get their attention, but you,
- 15:24it's not really the public that is your target.
- 15:27You're trying to do it or kind of to get media attention
- 15:31and or other kinds of attention.
- 15:33But you are doing it because you have this other gripe,
- 15:37this other thing, which is,
- 15:39you know, let's stop climate change.
- 15:42But that's then,
- 15:43because there is no connection between
- 15:46what you want and what you do,
- 15:48that becomes a kind of consequentialist act as well.
- 15:51You're causing harm to some people in order
- 15:56because you have this other bigger more important thing
- 16:00that you want to claim.
- 16:01But so that would not be according
- 16:04to kind of anarchist ethics,
- 16:07which ought to be prefigurative.
- 16:10Now there are, so what would be prefigurative then?
- 16:15Well, it would be prefigurative to stop,
- 16:18you know, block oil refineries for example,
- 16:20which is also something that the climate movement have done.
- 16:24It would be prefigurative to block airports,
- 16:28particularly these airports that are used
- 16:31by private jets and so on, right?
- 16:34Which is also a practice
- 16:35that some of these movements have done.
- 16:38So those kind of actions that are more targeted,
- 16:40well, they target things that are simply incompatible
- 16:44with a sustainable, an ecologically sustainable world.
- 16:48So those kind of actions would be
- 16:50prefigurative in a different way.
- 16:53So those are kind of the different kind of ethical,
- 16:58well, reasons why,
- 16:59you know, ethics to follow.
- 17:01Then when we get into the more political we can ask,
- 17:04why should we disobey the law?
- 17:07So why is breaking the law to save the world
- 17:11even something that is worth considering politically?
- 17:15So then what it achieves
- 17:18and what obviously the most kind of famous examples of this
- 17:22in recent year achieve is media attention, right?
- 17:24It gets media attention to an issue or to a group.
- 17:29And then you must always ask,
- 17:31to what purpose do you do that?
- 17:33To what purpose do you get that media attention?
- 17:38And what some of these later groups
- 17:40then have realized is that, okay, well, if we have a name
- 17:44that gets mentioned every time in the media
- 17:46like Insulate Britain or like Just Stop Oil
- 17:50less so maybe with Just Stop Oil, but still,
- 17:52or as various groups around Europe as well do,
- 17:59then every time you get mentioned in the media, you kind of,
- 18:02it's obvious you can politicize an issue, you can get,
- 18:06you can raise the profile of a certain issue in a way that,
- 18:11for example, Extinction Rebellion didn't necessarily do,
- 18:14although they did certainly in Britain
- 18:19when they first kind of became famous in April, 2019
- 18:24with their occupation of Central London.
- 18:27They did achieve a lot of attention towards climate change
- 18:30and they did change public opinion
- 18:33quite drastically on climate change and that has lasted.
- 18:41So that kind of media attention
- 18:43can obviously serve a purpose.
- 18:46It doesn't necessarily serve a purpose.
- 18:48So it's important that it doesn't,
- 18:51that all the talk isn't about the action
- 18:53that you get to talk about the issue
- 18:56and the responsibility to do that
- 18:58doesn't just lie with the movement themselves.
- 19:01It lies with people like me and other experts
- 19:04who get to talk in the media
- 19:07as a result of actions that people do.
- 19:11So, you know, if when I get interviewed about things,
- 19:17about Van Gogh paintings and so on, you know,
- 19:20it's important that I bring the conversation
- 19:24back to what it should be about,
- 19:26which is, in the case of that with just stopping oil,
- 19:30which is about renewing this oil,
- 19:34like give new oil lines a hundred new licenses
- 19:37to export oil and gas in the UK.
- 19:42So that kind of using that media attention
- 19:46is obviously important.
- 19:47It's not obvious that the media attention is a good thing.
- 19:52It's also exaggerated those that say that it's a bad thing.
- 19:55It's like, and this is something that I'm actually
- 19:57starting to do quite a lot of research into now,
- 20:02really trying to see
- 20:03the public opinion effects of unpopular protests,
- 20:07which if you look at opinion polls are actually,
- 20:10there's really very little evidence to say
- 20:12that unpopular protests are counterproductive
- 20:17for the movement as a whole.
- 20:20This it's,
- 20:25people don't really stop,
- 20:28people don't think that we should burn the planet
- 20:31because they get annoyed of people sitting in the road.
- 20:35There's little evidence to suggest that
- 20:38although there is one group in society,
- 20:41it seems it gets a little bit more militant against it,
- 20:45but largely that's not what happens.
- 20:47But that doesn't mean that all attention is good attention.
- 20:50Like you need to know what you want to do
- 20:53with the attention that you get from the media.
- 20:57So you can ask that for what purpose.
- 20:59And then a deeper question there is,
- 21:02well, what is the role of public opinion?
- 21:06Are you trying to recruit people to the movement?
- 21:08Are you trying to just let people know
- 21:11that climate change is real
- 21:13and it's a threat and that it gets talked about?
- 21:16And if it is the latter,
- 21:18then in the UK and in most of Europe,
- 21:21that has already been kind of achieved,
- 21:24like climate change denialism is a very small phenomenon.
- 21:29People on the large know that climate change is real
- 21:32and know that it's threat, how big a threat it is.
- 21:37They might not, you know,
- 21:38if you ask the general public,
- 21:39you probably don't get as accurate answers.
- 21:43But getting climate change just talked about
- 21:47isn't necessarily the win
- 21:49that it maybe was 10 or 20 years ago.
- 21:53Not in the UK or in Europe.
- 21:55I don't want to speak on behalf of the US
- 21:57because I know that obviously in the US,
- 22:00well, climate change denialism has been
- 22:03a much, much bigger, bigger problem.
- 22:06And you have certainly powerful political forces
- 22:09that deny climate change in a way in the US
- 22:12that we don't necessarily have on this side of the Atlantic.
- 22:17But anyway, it's not obvious that
- 22:21what you want public opinion about,
- 22:23like is it's important just simply getting it,
- 22:27just getting the attention
- 22:29isn't necessarily going to achieve very much.
- 22:33So another reason that it's these movements use disobedience
- 22:40and break the law is to create a kind of tension
- 22:42and polarization in society where,
- 22:46so that issues can get sort of politicized.
- 22:49So you know that you're gonna anger a lot of people and you,
- 22:54but you try to use that anger
- 22:57to kind of politicize the issues
- 22:59that you want to get politicized.
- 23:02And that polarization has been largely successful.
- 23:07So, you know, you now see in opinion polls
- 23:11that people who are concerned about climate change
- 23:16are much more likely to be supportive
- 23:19of groups that do this.
- 23:22What you haven't seen is loads of people
- 23:25joining civil disobedience movements, right?
- 23:27So these movements are still made up
- 23:30by really, really quite, you know,
- 23:32a small section of society.
- 23:34So although you have about 10% of people saying that,
- 23:36oh, I would do civil disobedience for climate change,
- 23:39the actual number that are involved
- 23:41is obviously much, much smaller.
- 23:46One of the key reasons why to engage in direct action
- 23:51or civil disobedience is that it can get direct results.
- 23:55Now the chance of getting direct results is much greater
- 24:01if your target is closer to home.
- 24:05So obviously if your demand is to save the world
- 24:11and then no actor that you're protesting against
- 24:15is going to be able to do that,
- 24:17if your target is to
- 24:19even stop the government to doing something,
- 24:21then it's gonna be difficult to do that.
- 24:24Whereas if your target is to stop your university
- 24:27investing in oil and gas, for example,
- 24:30that's a much more achievable target
- 24:32to actually get results if you do civil disobedience.
- 24:39And indeed we have seen such civil disobedience work
- 24:42in many universities around the world, right?
- 24:48So that has to do with what kind of de demands you put
- 24:53but you can get direct results through civil disobedience,
- 24:58through direct action in a way
- 25:00that you would never do with other kinds of protest
- 25:04and which you can achieve
- 25:05with quite small numbers of people, of course,
- 25:11also that goes for media attention as well.
- 25:13You can get much more space in the media
- 25:16with much smaller numbers of people
- 25:18when you do disobedient protests.
- 25:20And in a way that's what appeals to me
- 25:23with disobedient protests and why I'm so interested in it
- 25:26because I can see, you know,
- 25:28that it has shaped quite a lot of political life
- 25:31and political discussion around number of issues
- 25:35with much smaller amounts of people
- 25:40than have been involved in other kinds of protests.
- 25:44So then to kind of,
- 25:45obviously I've touched on this, but you know,
- 25:47what makes it work?
- 25:48Well, having achievable demands works, right?
- 25:52If you have demands that the actors
- 25:54that you are protesting against can do something about,
- 25:59can put into place,
- 26:01then you are much more likely to achieve something.
- 26:06So achievable demands but,
- 26:08and that's not to say that we shouldn't aim big,
- 26:13of course we should, but then that's,
- 26:17you know, you're not gonna necessarily get,
- 26:19each protest won't have the same results.
- 26:24And what we also have to remember
- 26:25is that these protests come at great personal risk
- 26:29to the people who carry them out.
- 26:33Targets, so who are we targeting with our protests?
- 26:38So if we target the general public,
- 26:41what's the reason for doing that?
- 26:44And you know, what do we,
- 26:46that's the only reason for targeting the general public,
- 26:50I think would be to achieve space in the media.
- 26:54So then you have to really make sure
- 26:56that you use that in the right way.
- 26:59So Extinction Rebellion, for example,
- 27:01have now said that they will no longer
- 27:02target the general public, right?
- 27:05So that was part of their kind of when they declared
- 27:09that we quit at the start of this year
- 27:11wasn't actually we quit.
- 27:13It was more of a,
- 27:14well, we are no longer going to target the general public,
- 27:17we're going to just have target specific emitters
- 27:21or you know, the government and so on.
- 27:25So obviously if you have a target,
- 27:28then you need to do much less to,
- 27:30if you have a logical target,
- 27:31then you need to do much less to justify your protests,
- 27:35but you also might not get the same attention.
- 27:38So Just Stop Oil, for example,
- 27:40was founded or started off with
- 27:43attacking sort of the oil infrastructure,
- 27:45but that's often, you know,
- 27:47located far away from where the journalists hang out
- 27:49and far away from where there are a lot of people.
- 27:52So nobody really noticed, nobody took much notice of them.
- 27:55So although the target was much more logical
- 27:58from a stopping climate change perspective,
- 28:01they didn't achieve the same
- 28:03and that's why they kind of then reverted
- 28:05to do more kind of headline grabbing kind of actions.
- 28:12So whilst it's easier to justify,
- 28:14you might lose the attention that you get otherwise.
- 28:21But more than that, why, what makes it work?
- 28:24Well, what does the actions that these groups take,
- 28:29what do they say about the politics?
- 28:31What do the targets say about the politics of these groups?
- 28:37And they're, you know,
- 28:40so what we've seen a lot in the UK has been
- 28:45targeting of banks and so on.
- 28:47So how clear does that kind of messaging becomes of like,
- 28:50what's the role of the sort of banking sector,
- 28:53for example, in that?
- 28:56So when we see sort of Just Stop Oil
- 29:00in the most recent kind of wave was,
- 29:04or protest or also targeted, you know,
- 29:08for example, luxury car dealerships and so on.
- 29:12And there you can see.
- 29:14So although, and as a critical political economist,
- 29:17I've often been frustrated with this.
- 29:20So I was frustrated with Extinction Rebellion in early days
- 29:23and being, you know, kind of not wanting to talk about,
- 29:26capitalism or whatever that kind of means
- 29:29because they didn't want to be labeled
- 29:30as a kind of left wing group.
- 29:33They wanted to have a kind of wider appeal.
- 29:37But more and more
- 29:39in the targets that these groups have chosen,
- 29:42it's clear that they take their aim
- 29:44at the way that the political economy works, right?
- 29:47So then that can be both kind of culturally
- 29:50through markers like luxury cars
- 29:52as a kind of marker of class
- 29:57and of a culture of high emission kind of culture
- 30:02or as we say, you know,
- 30:04against banks and obviously,
- 30:06of course, the fossil fuel industry themselves.
- 30:11So there we have seen I think a shift to targeting
- 30:15much more of, yeah,
- 30:18the forces to drive capitalism as it is, I suppose.
- 30:24Now where my kind of main critiques against this,
- 30:29these movements have gone
- 30:31is what I kind of see as Hallamism called,
- 30:34named after the co-founder
- 30:36of Extinction Rebellion, Roger Hallam.
- 30:40And it is this focus on arrests, arrests, arrests
- 30:47and this kind of, I suppose, glorifying arrests
- 30:50because whilst getting arrested is always a risk
- 30:55if you're engaged in activities that break the law,
- 31:00making the arrest an aim in itself is something
- 31:04that comes at really high cost for activists.
- 31:09And it's also something that doesn't necessarily, you know,
- 31:13when they launched Extinction Rebellion and so on,
- 31:16they made a whole lot of claims about,
- 31:18oh, this what we are doing is based on social science
- 31:22and this is also a thing that they go,
- 31:23like they say now with like,
- 31:25with Just Stop Oil, for example,
- 31:27which Hallam is also very deeply involved in.
- 31:30And you know, like civil disobedience is going to save us,
- 31:34you know, like it's our only hope.
- 31:36Now I don't think it is.
- 31:38I think that civil disobedience is really important
- 31:41and it's something that is absolutely justifiable,
- 31:44but putting all our hope to it,
- 31:48I think is also a mistake to some extent.
- 31:53But particularly this thing with getting arrested
- 31:56is basically based on one episode
- 31:59of this US Civil Rights movement
- 32:02and he basically read something in a book and then said,
- 32:06well, this is what we have to do.
- 32:08And it's taken it completely out of the context
- 32:12in which it was carried out.
- 32:14So this kind of all focus
- 32:17and glorification of getting arrested
- 32:20is something that I think wasn't very well thought through.
- 32:24And that also, you know,
- 32:25had some unfortunate political consequences
- 32:28in the way that it often excludes many people
- 32:34from engaging in the movement.
- 32:38What we've also seen,
- 32:39and this is obviously not Roger Hallam's
- 32:41or anybody else's fault as such,
- 32:44but we've obviously seen a big authoritarian backlash.
- 32:45And that's partly because these movements
- 32:47have achieved a lot.
- 32:48So we've got anti protest laws in country after country,
- 32:52which is also something
- 32:53that I've started to research more and more,
- 32:58but that's really changed the context
- 33:00under which these protests take place.
- 33:02So the scope is smaller in a way.
- 33:07Another question that's been raised around this is violence.
- 33:12So Roger Hallam is a very nonviolent,
- 33:15so you know, very much professing nonviolence.
- 33:18That's obviously something that has been more questioned
- 33:23and is also something that I often discuss with my students,
- 33:25you know, what is violence actually?
- 33:29Can you be violent against things?
- 33:31For example, is sabotage of objects a violent act?
- 33:39It's certainly classified as such by our governments,
- 33:41but is it so ethically?
- 33:44And that's obviously something
- 33:47that is also increasingly questioned and played with,
- 33:51I mean, this "How to Blow Up a Pipeline"
- 33:54new film coming out I've seen or I've seen trailers for.
- 33:58It's probably already out.
- 33:59And obviously also one thing that Hallam
- 34:04and this kind of Hallamism has been critiqued for
- 34:08is that it hasn't been very good
- 34:09at building movements, building broader movements.
- 34:12So it's not really,
- 34:14it doesn't really have a political vision and has seen,
- 34:20they have seen that as,
- 34:22that's a good thing as in like we can pull in more people
- 34:27if we don't have a very clear political vision.
- 34:30But it can also I think, be limiting.
- 34:34And it has, obviously, they are doing very risky things
- 34:39and that also has not been, you know,
- 34:43that make it difficult to draw in,
- 34:45drawing large numbers of people.
- 34:49So I'm not convinced that it has done very much
- 34:53to build a kind of broader climate movement.
- 34:57Now they will say that that's because,
- 35:00well, we are part of a radical flank
- 35:02to a more kind of moderate flank
- 35:05in the broader climate movement.
- 35:07And now you can see how it can do like that
- 35:10because they kind of open up spaces for conversation.
- 35:13And in that case, you know, I kind of buy into that,
- 35:16that it certainly has done that.
- 35:19But in terms of a, I don't,
- 35:22I'm not sure I would call them radical
- 35:24because although the actions are risky,
- 35:27the lack of political vision within it really,
- 35:32kind of ideology or whatever you want to call it,
- 35:36makes it maybe not all that radical, right?
- 35:40Like, I mean as in it's difficult to, they're not,
- 35:43although they're radical in their actions,
- 35:46they're not necessarily radical
- 35:48in what they envision for the world.
- 35:53I'm gonna skip that slide
- 35:55because I want to go ahead to the questions,
- 35:58but largely I suppose
- 36:00if I would speak to a group of activists,
- 36:02I would say, you know,
- 36:04and I recently came out with a co-authored paper
- 36:07that questions this, you know,
- 36:09what do climate activists mean when they say system change,
- 36:11not climate change, whose system, what changed?
- 36:16And when I asked, you know, this question,
- 36:18who and what stands in the way for action on climate change,
- 36:22I had a kind of session with student activist about this
- 36:26a few weeks ago during strikes here.
- 36:28And what comes out then is all, you know,
- 36:32some kind of version of wealth capitalism
- 36:34or how the economy works
- 36:36actually property rights and you know,
- 36:38who has the right to do what with what kind of property,
- 36:43profit motive, the need for growth
- 36:46or things that stand in the way
- 36:49for action on climate change.
- 36:51If those are kind of structural reasons
- 36:54then you have certain agents, you know,
- 36:56private actors, private certain sectors,
- 36:59obviously, not least the fossil fuel industry,
- 37:01but also other industries such as the financial industry
- 37:06that might stand in the way,
- 37:08certain state actors that stand in the way
- 37:11and also this kind of broader culture
- 37:12or kind of consumerist culture
- 37:15and a political culture that limits us.
- 37:21This came through from students as well,
- 37:23a political culture that limits our vision
- 37:26or what is possible in a way.
- 37:29So what I would, you know,
- 37:31I don't like telling people what the right thing to do is,
- 37:36but I do like to ask people
- 37:37to think why they're doing what they're doing.
- 37:40And so after setting out these things that are wrong,
- 37:46you know, when and how do what we do as activists,
- 37:50when does that weaken the structures and actors
- 37:54that we have set out here or that I set out together
- 37:57with that group of kind of student activists,
- 37:59when do what we do weaken the power
- 38:03of those structures and actors
- 38:05because that's really what we need to do.
- 38:10And not presume that attention in itself
- 38:14is going to win the fight for us.
- 38:19I think I'll stop there and open up for questions,
- 38:22which will be moderated by Laura, I believe.
- 38:27<v ->All right, thank you Dr. Berglund.</v>
- 38:29That was extremely edifying
- 38:31and I would just like to thank you
- 38:33for doing what we do in public health,
- 38:35which is having an evidence base for everything,
- 38:39(laughs) at least we try.
- 38:41And so being so thoughtful
- 38:43and turning this topic into an area of scholarly work,
- 38:48I think is extremely helpful.
- 38:50We've got a lot of excitement here,
- 38:52so I'm gonna jump right in.
- 38:54We had a question come in on the chat.
- 38:58Let me open this one up.
- 39:01This came in from Elon Martin Prachat,
- 39:05I'm sorry if I'm not pronouncing your name properly.
- 39:08We're grateful to have you here from Quebec, Canada.
- 39:12Elon is a high school student
- 39:14and we're especially grateful to have youth here
- 39:19because obviously there's a lot that is affecting all of us,
- 39:23but particularly younger generations.
- 39:26The question is,
- 39:27to what extent can indirect civil disobedience
- 39:32effectively tackle climate change
- 39:35when direct civil disobedience is impossible?
- 39:42<v ->So there are a few different definitions</v>
- 39:46about what indirect and direct civil disobedience is.
- 39:48So Rawls' definition of what direct civil disobedience
- 39:52is to directly break the law
- 39:54that you are protesting against.
- 39:57So I'm gonna presume that it's something along those lines,
- 40:02correct me if I'm wrong, but that's kind of like if it's,
- 40:09so some kinds of direct disobedience are possible
- 40:14and we often see those
- 40:17as the more successful civil disobedience campaigns
- 40:24and they tend to be anti-extractivist struggles.
- 40:27So we can see them in a lot of places in the world.
- 40:32You have examples from the US
- 40:36with the North Dakota access pipeline, for example,
- 40:40that went global in its reach.
- 40:43And you have many anti-extractivist struggles
- 40:47across Latin America that I'm familiar with.
- 40:50My dad's and different family members
- 40:52have been really involved in many of those.
- 40:56In the UK for example, I mean, fracking was stopped,
- 41:00like fracking is not practiced in the UK.
- 41:03It was stopped and largely by anti-fracking activists
- 41:10that stopped fracking at site.
- 41:13So you can see that as kind of direct action,
- 41:15like we're stopping what is and yeah, the kind of,
- 41:20if you by indirect mean the,
- 41:23okay, we're sitting on a road
- 41:25outside London in order to stop,
- 41:28in order to get the government
- 41:30to put loads of money into insulating homes,
- 41:35that is a less direct action.
- 41:37So I mean, but what they actually achieved, for example,
- 41:43was to really politicize
- 41:44the issue of house and home insulation,
- 41:47which for the UK is a really big deal if we are gonna,
- 41:51get anywhere near to reach the kind of emission targets
- 41:54that we have because there's a lot of leakage of heat
- 41:57from British homes, right?
- 41:58It's a really old kind of housing stock
- 42:00and it's a big, it's a big problem.
- 42:02So insulating homes in Britain is a big deal.
- 42:06And you know, they did.
- 42:07They did insulate, so they did get home insulation
- 42:12to become a much bigger political issue than it was.
- 42:16So my colleague here at University of Bristol,
- 42:18Colin Davis who I work, he's a clinical psychologist,
- 42:21but he works a lot on,
- 42:23sorry, cognitive psychology professor,
- 42:26but he works a lot on these issues.
- 42:29So climate protests as well,
- 42:31more on the getting arrested end of it than I have myself.
- 42:35But he did research about home insulation
- 42:39and tracked it in the media and saw that,
- 42:42well, actually home insulation
- 42:43is being talked about much more,
- 42:45you know, it went like this.
- 42:46And not just related to the protests themselves,
- 42:49but in general following the protest.
- 42:50So there is obviously stuff we can do that we can achieve.
- 42:56Now the biggest political things of like,
- 42:59you know, are we actually saving the world?
- 43:03I mean, that's really difficult to find evidence for, right?
- 43:08But the kind of things that we can measure are things like,
- 43:13you know, okay, so how,
- 43:16what kind of media attention are we getting
- 43:18with the things we're doing,
- 43:20with these indirect forms of protest?
- 43:23And obviously, if homes are eventually insulated,
- 43:27the direct action will be one part of what achieved that.
- 43:32And actually it's part of a much broader,
- 43:34you know, many broader political processes.
- 43:39Yeah.
- 43:46<v ->Oh sorry.</v>
- 43:47That was excellent, thank you.
- 43:49David Hughes.
- 43:51<v ->Yeah, thanks.</v>
- 43:52I really enjoyed the presentation.
- 43:53I'm calling in here from Rutgers University of New Jersey.
- 43:57I have a question about accepting the legal consequences.
- 44:02You suggested that that was a necessary component
- 44:05in civil disobedience or in in nonviolent direct action?
- 44:09Well, it actually was the civil disobedience part.
- 44:12So I wonder, I mean, I heard recently
- 44:15that some XR people in Britain were found not guilty
- 44:19in a trial through jury nullification.
- 44:22And I'm studying, in fact,
- 44:25some civil disobedience movements in New England,
- 44:27which are again, you know,
- 44:28have gone to trial hoping for jury nullification.
- 44:33Also various activists have tried
- 44:35to use the necessity defense,
- 44:38which is another way of avoiding jail time and fines.
- 44:42And of course, if one can get away with it,
- 44:44then the number of people able to do civil disobedience
- 44:47will grow very substantially.
- 44:49So I guess my question is,
- 44:50I mean, what do you think of the jury nullification route
- 44:54in the UK and the US and you know,
- 44:57is bearing the legal consequences that necessary?
- 45:03<v ->Before, could you just specify what jury nullification is?</v>
- 45:07<v ->Oh, that's where a jury believes,</v>
- 45:10a juror or jury believes that the defendant did the crime,
- 45:16but they decide to set the law aside.
- 45:20<v ->Yeah, okay.</v>
- 45:21<v ->It is a power but not a right</v>
- 45:22that jurors in both countries have.
- 45:25<v ->Yeah, absolutely.</v>
- 45:26So the US and the UK are interesting cases there
- 45:30because we have trial by jury in both these countries.
- 45:33You know, in Sweden where I'm from,
- 45:34we don't have trial by jury.
- 45:36So that doesn't become an option.
- 45:39So in the UK it's been a tactic by some activists
- 45:43to get a jury to create,
- 45:46to produce as much damage that they,
- 45:49that it would warrant,
- 45:50that it would kind of qualify to be tried by a jury.
- 45:53And very, very often we are found not guilty.
- 45:56The necessity claiming that, you know,
- 46:00you had a necessity to do what you need.
- 46:03That hasn't tended to be that successful in the UK.
- 46:06It's got a very poor success rate.
- 46:08So as a defense,
- 46:11I know this because my colleague Graham Hayes
- 46:14who works on this,
- 46:16who follows more the trials of these things
- 46:18than I do myself as I made that observation,
- 46:21I'm not sure what,
- 46:22how the necessity defense in the US,
- 46:25how if it's been successful or not.
- 46:31But what I would say about all of these
- 46:33is that at the same time,
- 46:35so we do have like, I mean juries and courtrooms
- 46:39can be arenas to carry out this activism as well.
- 46:46And it's obviously something
- 46:49that activists have learned more,
- 46:51like to start with didn't really.
- 46:54Extinction Berlin weren't very good at using courtroom
- 46:59as a space to get the message out.
- 47:03I suppose it was more about trying to get acquitted.
- 47:08It really depends here on the judge and so on.
- 47:12And obviously what we must also take into account here
- 47:14is that there's real efforts by states and by,
- 47:20well, government certainly in the UK
- 47:22and I know that many states in the US
- 47:26also to limit our right to protest.
- 47:31And that makes jury nullification in a way harder.
- 47:36So I mean, there was a very publicized case here in the UK
- 47:39where one of the defendants was sent to prison for,
- 47:47because he was prohibited by the judge
- 47:49to mention climate change in his trial
- 47:52and he opposed that, right?
- 47:55And he mentioned climate change and was sent to prison
- 47:59on that basis for, you know,
- 48:01I don't know how many months as a contempt of court.
- 48:07So I don't know if it answers your question,
- 48:11but the necessity defense hasn't been successful in the UK,
- 48:15but there has been plenty of nullifications by jury
- 48:20and also finding not guilty as well and also,
- 48:26but that is becoming harder, and that's a background,
- 48:31you know, when these,
- 48:34when the police crime sentencing
- 48:36and court bill came through in the UK,
- 48:38which was an anti-protest bill that I organized,
- 48:41a letter signed by over 400 environment related academics
- 48:47around the world to protest
- 48:49the criminalization of protestors.
- 48:54And I think that's a real battleground.
- 48:57Like, the UN Secretary General has said as much as well.
- 49:05And it's something where that I think that
- 49:09more and more of us need to really
- 49:11turn our attention to and protest.
- 49:14And you know, here in the UK,
- 49:15we hope that that's kind of criminalization will stop,
- 49:19will be halted when we get a new government,
- 49:21which we know that will do pretty soon.
- 49:25But I'm not sure this,
- 49:27the trend of criminalizing climate protestors
- 49:31and making it harder to get away
- 49:34and be let off by juries is a global trend.
- 49:43<v ->Thank you so much.</v>
- 49:44We have a question that came in from Jack Markowitz,
- 49:47which is you've used, sorry,
- 49:49you've used the terms protest,
- 49:51civil disobedience, disobedience movement.
- 49:55What, if any, are the differences
- 49:56between these different forms of action?
- 49:59So protest, civil disobedience,
- 50:01and disobedience slash movement?
- 50:05<v ->Yeah, good question.</v>
- 50:07So I mean, protest is anything that you,
- 50:11you know, protest.
- 50:13So if you stand outside somewhere with a placard,
- 50:16you are protesting something, right?
- 50:19And I think a lot of this kind of wave of climate activism
- 50:22has obviously been kind of going beyond
- 50:25that kind of protest to be more disruptive.
- 50:30So I often talk about disruptive protest
- 50:33and civil disobedience
- 50:35is really one way of understanding this
- 50:38that comes from this kind of liberal tradition
- 50:42of thinking about political theory.
- 50:45And whereas I, you know,
- 50:46also set out the kind of anarchist who think more about,
- 50:50more about it in terms of direct action,
- 50:52that's what the kind of terminology that they prefer.
- 50:56So really civil disobedience and direct action become,
- 51:01have a certain ideological or theoretical political baggage
- 51:07with them when we use those terms.
- 51:10Which, you know,
- 51:11I try to use disruptive protest as a descriptor of a protest
- 51:16that goes beyond just expressing your opinion
- 51:20and more about actually annoying somebody or something
- 51:24and stopping something.
- 51:31<v ->Excellent, that's really helpful.</v>
- 51:33Thank you, and good question.
- 51:36And from Dr. Dubrow,
- 51:37the Director of the Yale Center
- 51:38on Climate Change and Health,
- 51:40who are so grateful of supporting this seminar series.
- 51:45My anecdotal observation is that
- 51:47the climate change disobedience direct action movement
- 51:49in the US is attracting increasing participation
- 51:52by people of color,
- 51:53especially when climate change is linked to issues
- 51:56like housing or criminal justice, for example.
- 51:59Do you see any potential
- 52:01for a mass climate change
- 52:03civil disobedience direct action movement
- 52:05similar to the US Civil Rights movement in the 1960s?
- 52:10<v ->I hope so, I mean, I think it has to be, I often say,</v>
- 52:15and I think I ended my last paper with
- 52:19the struggle for climate justice
- 52:20does not necessarily start with climate,
- 52:23but that this is,
- 52:25that it needs to become a much broader, broader movement.
- 52:33And although I think that there was a tendency
- 52:35when these movements first came in the UK
- 52:39with Extinction Rebellion that,
- 52:41you know, to depoliticize it,
- 52:42but actually we don't need to depoliticize it.
- 52:45We need to politicize it, right?
- 52:47We need to, you know,
- 52:48climate change is deeply political
- 52:51and we know that of course,
- 52:53you will know as well as I do that climate change
- 52:59is the greatest kind of injustice
- 53:01and how it hits people and you know,
- 53:03it along, you know, class and race,
- 53:06racist kind of lines in in the US itself
- 53:13and of course, you know, globally even more so.
- 53:17And it's absolutely essential, I think,
- 53:20to link it to these other issues.
- 53:23Now, the extent to whether that's happening,
- 53:25you will probably see better in the US to whether,
- 53:29to the extent to which that's happening.
- 53:31I mean, obviously the environmental justice movement
- 53:34is a kind of inherently, kind anti-racist,
- 53:39a movement in the US that has foundations in the US
- 53:43and that's kind of given rise to climate justice as well.
- 53:47And you know,
- 53:48I think it's significant that climate justice
- 53:51was not a demand of Extinction Rebellion in the UK
- 53:53but it became a demand of Extinction Rebellion in the US.
- 53:57So I think that there is in the US climate movement,
- 54:01but this is my impression from kind of afar
- 54:04that those kind of climate justice issues
- 54:08which are much more politicized,
- 54:12have a stronger root in the climate change movement
- 54:18in the US than they do on this side of the Atlantic.
- 54:20That it's more white and middle class in Europe
- 54:25than it is in the US.
- 54:28But certainly the impression you get
- 54:29from from seeing it from afar, you'll know better.
- 54:35<v ->Thank you.</v>
- 54:36A question from Chris in Berlin,
- 54:40what are the CD tactics in the UK
- 54:46that have had the most impact?
- 54:49So what are the civil disobedience tactics
- 54:51that have been most effective?
- 54:55<v ->Yeah, well, that there,</v>
- 54:56I would say most effective to what?
- 54:58I mean, obviously,
- 54:59in a way this kind of wave all started with the,
- 55:05not that Extinction Rebellion's first thing
- 55:07was in April, 2019.
- 55:10But their first, you know,
- 55:11when they kind of became famous in April, 2019
- 55:16was achieved a public opinion shift.
- 55:21More people were concerned
- 55:23about climate change than previously.
- 55:26Fewer people denied its existence.
- 55:28More people saw it as a priority, as a political priority,
- 55:32so that we can see that in the kind of data
- 55:35that it was a shift happening at at that time.
- 55:39So, but it is so often with many kinds of protests,
- 55:44it's a surprise element,
- 55:45the novelty element that creates that.
- 55:48So then when you try to recreate it,
- 55:50well, then it doesn't have the same effect, right?
- 55:52So a few months later,
- 55:54then it didn't really achieve anything at all.
- 55:59I mean the Insulate Britain protests did achieve
- 56:04this kind of politicization of the insulation question,
- 56:08like did push it, you know, higher up the agenda,
- 56:11but that's just sitting in a road.
- 56:12At other times sitting in a road achieves very little.
- 56:16So it's actually really difficult
- 56:18to say what particular tactics are the most,
- 56:22that are the most kind of successful in a way.
- 56:27As I said, with any kind of
- 56:30civil disobedience or direct action,
- 56:33the more local your target is,
- 56:35the more the greater will your chances be
- 56:39of getting a direct effect
- 56:44or direct result from your actions.
- 56:48<v ->Thank you.</v>
- 56:50I would also wonder what the role is
- 56:51for the simplicity of the objective, right?
- 56:55And the fact that people are advocating
- 56:58on behalf of all of us, indeed all species,
- 57:01all of life as opposed to a specific group.
- 57:04You know, there's a certain sensibility
- 57:06asking for insulation is so, (laughs) so sensible.
- 57:11We have a question from,
- 57:13and I'm sorry Marielle Evelyn Tucker,
- 57:15I'm a huge fan of yours.
- 57:16I would love to get to your question,
- 57:18(laughs) but we're just out of time.
- 57:21We have room for one more question.
- 57:23Samuel Gold, great question as well.
- 57:25Given the authoritarian backlash,
- 57:27can civil disobedience remain as effective means of protest
- 57:30in the long term or does it become too unsafe
- 57:33and too unacceptable as it already is for many,
- 57:36for people to perform acts of civil disobedience?
- 57:40<v ->So I mean,</v>
- 57:41we know that being a climate activist or you know,
- 57:43an environmental activist is one of the most dangerous thing
- 57:46you can do in many countries in the world, you know,
- 57:48you have, I mean, Global Witness is an organization,
- 57:51there's material I've used a lot
- 57:53to is show how dangerous it is.
- 57:55That and being a trade unionist with,
- 57:58you know, people get killed, it's never safe.
- 58:05It's never been safe.
- 58:06I mean, in a way,
- 58:07if you make more and more things illegal,
- 58:09then you know more things will be doing,
- 58:11more people will be doing illegal things
- 58:13because more things are illegal to do more,
- 58:16more types of protest.
- 58:19The fact is that who you are and where you are,
- 58:23and what will affect the risks that you run of doing things.
- 58:29We're often protected not by the law itself,
- 58:35but by how that the police can't, for example,
- 58:40the some of the anti-protest laws that come in
- 58:44are absolutely inconceivable to think that the police
- 58:46will actually act consistently on those anti-protest laws.
- 58:51They will deploy them as and when they see fit
- 58:55and when they think it's important
- 58:57and when they think they can get away with it.
- 58:59So this, yes,
- 59:04we will see the civil disobedience and disobedience
- 59:07and we will probably, you know, a decade down the line,
- 59:10we will also see more violent, you know,
- 59:12more sabotage and and so on, I'm sure.
- 59:15So you can't, you know,
- 59:16climate change is going to cause a lot of disruption
- 59:21in itself within our lifetime
- 59:26and people are going to take to desperate measures
- 59:31to do something about it.
- 59:33So I definitely think that we will see
- 59:36all kinds of protests and that's not,
- 59:40that can't be legislated away.
- 59:45<v ->Thank you so much, Dr. Berglund.</v>
- 59:47You bring a lot of intellectual and activists power
- 59:51when you're discussing these things
- 59:53in such a thoughtful way.
- 59:54So we can't thank you enough
- 59:56for taking the time to speak with us all today.
- 59:59<v ->Thank you.</v>
- 60:00It's been a great honor and so many names that I see
- 01:00:02and respect hugely in (laughs) the audience as well.
- 01:00:07So thank you so much.
- 01:00:08Really good questions and really good discussions.
- 01:00:10I really enjoyed it.
- 01:00:12<v ->Thank you, all right.</v> <v ->Thanks, Oscar.</v>