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, 2023

Information

Dr. 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

ID10081

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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>