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Scientists again call for civil disobedience to spur climate action, saying ‘time is short’
(Inside Climate News, 30 Aug 2022) For the second time this year, climate researchers are urging their colleagues to risk arrest and commit acts of civil disobedience in an effort to pressure governments to take quicker, more substantial action on the climate crisis and to better convey how seriously the science community views the threats it poses to humanity and the environment.
In an article published Monday in the scientific journal Nature, a group of five climate scientists, joined by a political scientist who studies social movements, argued that it is both ethical and necessary for the broader science community to more forcefully advocate for “meaningful” policies that move society away from the burning of fossil fuels. Taking such action is justified, the group wrote, considering “time is short to secure a livable and sustainable future,” and inadequate government action has set the planet on “course for 3.2 °C of warming” by 2100, “with all the cascading and catastrophic consequences that this implies.”
The researchers, who hail from the United Kingdom’s Cardiff University and the University of Bristol, as well as Switzerland’s University of Lausanne, encouraged other climate scientists to participate in civil disobedience, such as “the bodily obstruction of investment banks enabling new fossil fuel exploration and the pasting without permission of scientific papers to government buildings.”
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Inside Climate News, 30 Aug 2022: Scientists again call for civil disobedience to spur climate action, saying ‘time is short’
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