Julia Steinberger, an ecological economist at Britain’s University of Leeds, endorses mass civil disobedience to pressure governments to tackle climate change at a protest at London’s Science Museum, Britain, 12 October 2019. Photo: Louise Jasper / REUTERS
Julia Steinberger, an ecological economist at Britain’s University of Leeds, endorses mass civil disobedience to pressure governments to tackle climate change at a protest at London’s Science Museum, Britain, 12 October 2019. Photo: Louise Jasper / REUTERS

By Matthew Green
12 October 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – Almost 400 scientists have endorsed a civil disobedience campaign aimed at forcing governments to take rapid action to tackle climate change, warning that failure could inflict “incalculable human suffering.”

In a joint declaration, climate scientists, physicists, biologists, engineers and others from at least 20 countries broke with the caution traditionally associated with academia to side with peaceful protesters courting arrest from Amsterdam to Melbourne.

Wearing white laboratory coats to symbolize their research credentials, a group of about 20 of the signatories gathered on Saturday to read out the text outside London’s century-old Science Museum in the city’s upmarket Kensington district.

“We believe that the continued governmental inaction over the climate and ecological crisis now justifies peaceful and non-violent protest and direct action, even if this goes beyond the bounds of the current law,” said Emily Grossman, a science broadcaster with a PhD in molecular biology. She read the declaration on behalf of the group.

We need to be rethinking the role of the scientist and engage with how social change happens at a massive and urgent scale. We can’t allow science as usual.

Julia Steinberger, ecological economist at the University of Leeds and a lead IPCC author

“We therefore support those who are rising up peacefully against governments around the world that are failing to act proportionately to the scale of the crisis,” she said.

The declaration was coordinated by a group of scientists who support Extinction Rebellion, a civil disobedience campaign that formed in Britain a year ago and has since sparked offshoots in dozens of countries. […]

While many scientists have shunned overt political debate, fearing that being perceived as activists might undermine their claims to objectivity, the 395 academics who had signed the declaration by 1100 GMT on Sunday chose to defy convention.

“The urgency of the crisis is now so great that many scientists feel, as humans, that we now have a moral duty to take radical action,” Grossman told Reuters.

Scientists aligned with Extinction Rebellion gather in London, Britain to declare their support of mass civil disobedience to force governments to act on climate change, in this image obtained via social media 12 October 2019. Photo: Scientists for Extinction Rebellion / REUTERS
Scientists aligned with Extinction Rebellion gather in London, Britain to declare their support of mass civil disobedience to force governments to act on climate change, in this image obtained via social media 12 October 2019. Photo: Scientists for Extinction Rebellion / REUTERS

Other signatories included several scientists who contributed to the U.N.-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has produced a series of reports underscoring the urgency of dramatic cuts in carbon emissions.

“We can’t allow the role of scientists to be to just write papers and publish them in obscure journals and hope somehow that somebody out there will pay attention,” Julia Steinberger, an ecological economist at the University of Leeds and a lead IPCC author, told Reuters.

“We need to be rethinking the role of the scientist and engage with how social change happens at a massive and urgent scale,” she said. “We can’t allow science as usual.” [more]

Scientists endorse mass civil disobedience to force climate action