To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
May 15, 2022
by Phil West, Seattle Workers’ Voice
On April 4, the UN’s climate body, the IPCC, issued its Working
Group 3 report assessing climate change mitigation progress and pledges
(1). This report is a voluminous examination of shortcomings and
lack of progress in the effort to deal with climate change. To
draw attention to this document, the group Scientist Rebellion staged a
number of protests during the week of April 4-9. Over 1000 scientists
in more than 25 countries took part in these demonstrations, and
several engaged in civil disobedience and were arrested. (2)
The nearest place to Seattle for one of these actions was in Portland, Oregon. Some scientists and engineers were planning to go down there, and I decided to join them. The reason for this action was that Portland had voted to create the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF), to fund local projects to counter the effects of climate change and promote social justice, (3) and a business-backed group, the Portland Business Alliance (PBA) had come out with a statement opposing it. (4)
The scientists organizing this action are associated with a group called Scientist Rebellion, an offshoot of the Extinction Rebellion group. (5) They planned to hold a rally at the PBA office building, march through the streets to the city government building, hold a rally there, then march back to the PBA building and hold an action during which some of the scientists planned a civil disobedience to get arrested. About 100 people gathered for the rally, and they listened to speeches by a scientist and a minister. Then they marched for several blocks, using bicycles to block off intersections. At one point a driver got angry that a bicycle was in his way, and rammed through it, breaking it into pieces. After listening to a few more speeches, the marchers returned to the PBA building, went up to the atrium on the second floor, and began a sit-in. Two members entered the inner portion of the atrium where the elevators were, and began a symbolic action to impede exit from the elevators.
After a while, the police were called to clear the inner atrium, and the two people there were arrested and cited for trespass. (6) One of them did not leave when told to do so, so he was cited a second time and conducted to a nearby holding cell. Shortly after this occurred, the sit-in began to disperse, and I went to dinner with my host for the evening. Later, the person who had been taken to the holding cell called us and told us that he had been released, and we went to pick him up from the police headquarters. Charges were eventually dropped against both activists.
Around the world, a number of scientists are now taking part in similar protests. They are so worried about how little time there is to avert catastrophic climate change that they are engaging in civil disobedience. As a letter from Scientist Rebellion states, “we are terrified by what we see, and believe it is both vital and right to express our fears openly.” (7) <>
(1) IPCC, Apr. 4, 2022, “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change”.
(2) Hilary Hanson, Apr. 16, 2022, “'We’ve Been Trying to Warn You': Fed-Up Scientists Get Arrested Demanding Climate Action”, Huffpost.
(3) Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, Sep. 29, 2021, “Portland’s massive clean energy fund plans $100M spending spree to fight climate change, promote racial and social justice”, Oregon Live,
(4) Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, Mar. 14, 2022, “Portland Business Alliance blasts clean energy fund ‘mismanagement,’ urges city leaders freeze spending”, Oregon Live,
(5) “We are scientists, calling for a climate revolution”.
(6) Bernadette Rogers, Apr. 20, 2022, “Arrested scientists were ignored – letter to The Oregonian”, Extinction Rebellion.
(7) “Our Demands Letter”, Scientist Rebellion. <>
Below is the text of the open letter being circulated by Scientist Rebellion. They are “asking scientists and academics around the world to put their name” to it. The letter itself, a list of present signatories, and instructions about how to add one’s name to the letter, can be found here. Unlike the UN’s IPCC, which is not allowed to go beyond being advisers to the rich and powerful of the world, it does not submerge itself in calling for complex and arcane solutions that are acceptable to the market-based economies of the present. Instead it stresses that “Current actions and plans are grossly inadequate, and even these obligations are not being met.” It points directly to the responsibility of the governments, corporations, and the very wealthy for the present crisis, and it connects achieving decarbonization with social justice, saying that the rich have to pay for the necessary steps. It calls for “degrowth”, which is a step towards realizing that major change in the present economic system is needed to deal with the environmental crisis. It repudiates the idea that scientists should be passive spectators of what is going on by calling for non-violent civil disobedience; this is a declaration that these scientists want to help people take matters into their own hands, although as the struggle grows, there will have to be a broader idea of how the mass struggle develops and how social change takes place. The letter deserves wide circulation. The full text reads:
We are scientists and academics who believe we should expose the
reality and severity of the climate and
ecological emergency by engaging in
non-violent civil disobedience. Unless
those best placed to understand
behave as if this is an
emergency, we cannot expect the public to do so. Some
believe that appearing “alarmist” is detrimental - but we are
terrified by what we see, and
believe it is both vital and
right to express our fears openly.
The population sizes of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have seen an alarming average drop of 68% since 1970, along with an apparent collapse in the pollinator populations. At this rate, ecosystems around the world will collapse well within the lifespan of current generations, with catastrophic consequences for the human kind.
Self-reinforcing feedbacks within the climate system, in which hotter climates cause additional heating (e.g. increased forest fires, thawing permafrost, melting ice) threaten to drive the Earth irreversibly to a hot and uninhabitable state. These effects are being observed decades earlier than predicted, in line with the worst-case scenarios predicted.
Increasingly severe heatwaves, droughts
and natural disasters are occurring
year after year, while sea levels
may rise by several meters this
century, displacing hundreds of millions
of people living in coastal areas.
There is a growing fear amongst
scientists that simultaneous extreme weather events in major
agricultural areas could cause global food shortages, thus triggering
societal collapse. For example, the drought in Syria (2011-2015)
destroyed much of the country’s
agriculture and livestock, driving
millions into cities and sparking a civil war from
which the world is still reeling. We face a crisis possibly hundreds of
times more severe. To be informed is to be alarmed.
Current actions and plans are grossly inadequate, and even these obligations are not being met. The rate of environmental destruction closely tracks economic growth, which leads to us extracting more resources from Earth than are regenerated. Governments and corporations aim to increase growth and profits, inevitably accelerating the destruction of life on Earth.
• To achieve decarbonisation on the required scale demands economic degrowth, at least in the short term. This does not necessarily require a reduction in living standards.
• For a just transition, the
cost of degrowth must be paid
for by the wealthiest, who have
benefited enormously from the current
destructive world order, while others have
faced the consequences.
• A just transition to a sustainable system requires the wealth from the 1% to be used for the common benefit.
The most effective means of achieving systemic change in modern history is through non-violent civil resistance. We call on academics, scientists and the public to join us in civil disobedience to demand emergency decarbonisation and degrowth, facilitated by wealth redistribution. <>
Picture: Scientists engage in civil disobedience to demand climate action
Back to main
page,
how to order CV,
write us!
