The Two Faces Of Climate Justice In The UK – CleanTechnica

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Punishing heat, powerful storms, massive drought — people all over the world are waking up to the reality of climate change. They are angry that they have been deliberately lied to, misled, fed misinformation, and basically told to butt out, it’s none of your business. It’s enough to make some people angry. Channeling that anger can take many forms. Sometimes society in the form of legislatures, law enforcement, and courts provides outlets for our frustrations and sometimes it punishes those who act out quite harshly. If you want to express your disappointment with how those in power have botched the whole global heating thing, it’s important to know which is which.

London Science Museum Yields To Climate Advocates

The Science Museum in the Kensington section of London features the Wonderlab, an interactive experience designed to ignite the curiosity, fuel your imagination, and inspire young people to see the world around them in new and exciting ways. It features live science shows and demonstrations and science Explainers who reveal the beauty of the science and maths that shape our everyday lives. According to The Guardian, the Wonderlab is a gallery where dry ice billows, waves bounce, mist flows, and materials are tested at the Chemical Bar. It has 50 interactive exhibits, with staff to explain the science and get kids involved. Regular live shows (included) demonstrate the science behind rockets, explosions, and other noisy, messy phenomena.

Since 2016, the Wonderlab has been sponsored by Equinor, Norway’s national energy company. Now that relationship has come to an end, thanks to the efforts of climate campaigners who accuse Equinor of not doing enough to lower its carbon footprint and thereby accelerating the climate emergency. The sponsorship deal had been controversial because of Equinor’s role in Rosebank, the biggest undeveloped oil and gas field in the North Sea, which the government gave the go-ahead to develop last year. The company also inserted a “gagging clause” in its original deal with the museum, which prevented staff from making comments that could be seen as “discrediting or damaging the goodwill or reputation” of Equinor.

In a statement, the Science Museum confirmed that Equinor’s sponsorship had “drawn to a close at the end of their current contract term.” A spokesperson added, “The partnership concludes with our warm appreciation and with our ongoing encouragement to Equinor to continue to raise the bar in their efforts to put in place emissions reduction targets aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5°C.” CleanTechnica readers are fully aware that average global temperatures have actually exceeded that temperature for the past 13 months straight, adding force to the argument that governments, civic institutions, and fossil fuel companies have been busy paying lip service to climate goals while doing next to nothing to actually achieve them.

The move has added to pressure on the museum to cut ties with other fossil fuel sponsors, including BP and the Indian coal-mining conglomerate Adani, which sponsors an exhibit known as the Adani Green Energy Gallery. The Science Museum has forcefully defended its relationships with oil and gas companies in the past primarily, one presumes, because the money they provide is too good to pass up.

Campaigners welcomed the decision to end the sponsorship. Chris Garrard, co-director of Culture Unstained, which has campaigned against the fossil fuel sponsorship of the Science Museum said, “This is a seismic shift. After years of mounting pressure, the Science Museum has now adopted red lines on climate change which have led to Equinor being dropped. Yet rather than proudly telling the world that it took action because its sponsor was flouting climate targets backed by governments around the world, the museum continues to push the false narrative that its polluting sponsors are leading the energy transition. With BP also failing to align its business with Paris Agreement goals and Adani the world’s biggest private producer of coal, the museum must now hold these companies to the same standard and stop promoting their toxic brands.”

Protesters From Just Stop Oil Face Prison For Climate Protests

Also in London this week, five climate protesters associated with the group Just Stop Oil are facing years in prison. Now just to be clear, these are some seriously pissed off people who are none too polite. They have learned from the playbook of Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion, which took over the Waterloo Bridge in London 5 years ago and planted a garden in the middle of it. Several of its members were arrested shortly thereafter and charged with the heinous crime of conspiring to create a public nuisance, which in the UK is apparently a far more serious offense than contributing to the delinquency of the environment.

The Extinction Rebellion brouhaha inspired the UK government under the leadership of head jackass Rishi Sunak to enact Section 14 of the Public Order Act, which is designed to prohibit public protests, no matter how peaceful. Earlier this year, Greta Thunberg and several others were acquitted after being charged with standing on the sidewalk outside a hotel where a government meeting was taking place. In his decision, the judge said that Section 14 was so vague that no one could possibly know whether they were in or out of compliance with it.

In their trial, the five members of Just Stop Oil are using tactics borrowed from Abbie Hoffman and his colleagues who were prosecuted by the US government for disrupting the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Known as the Chicago Seven, they brazenly used the trial to showcase their complaints and broadcast them to the world.

To be fair, the actions that led to their prosecution were… stupid is perhaps the kindest way of putting it. In 2022, they and several followers stood on the gantries that hold road signs over the M25 motorway around London wearing bright orange pants, forcing police to stop traffic on four consecutive days. The government said the disruption amounted to £750,000 of economic damage and a £1,000,000 in policing cost, with about 709,000 drivers affected. The judge warned the defendants they faced a harsh penalty if convicted. Two men who blocked the Queen Elizabeth II bridge in June were jailed for two years each.

The defendants attempted to inform the jurors about the reasons for their actions, but were prohibited from doing so by the judge, who ruled that climate change was no excuse for their outrageous behavior. They persisted anyway, and soon a small army of supporters gathered every day outside the courthouse holding signs telling the jurors they were not being told the whole story. One of those watching the trial has been Michel Forst, UN rapporteur for environmental defenders, who took the unusual step of issuing a public statement criticizing the prosecution of the defendants, particularly that of Daniel Shaw, whose crime, apparently, was speaking to the other defendants on a Zoom call.

“I fail to see how exposing Mr Shaw to a multiyear prison sentence for being on a Zoom call that discussed the organisation of a peaceful environmental protest is either reasonable or proportionate, nor pursues a legitimate public purpose,” Forst wrote. “Rather, I am gravely concerned that a sanction of this magnitude is purely punitive and repressive.” According to The Guardian, that Zoom call took place just a few days before the M25 protests began. The prosecution said it was part of an effort to recruit volunteers to take part in the direct actions. The call was infiltrated by a Sun journalist who recorded it and passed it to the Metropolitan police.

Don’t Say Climate Change

The defendants did not challenge the prosecution’s case, but wanted to explain to the jury how the seriousness of global heating compelled them to take action. Such defenses have been successful in other recent trials, but the judge ruled the defendants could not present any evidence about the climate to the court, save for the brief statements about their philosophical and political beliefs that ultimately would have no bearing on the verdict. They did so anyway, sometimes at great length. Several of them were arrested in the courtroom and dragged off to jail. At the conclusion of the trial, the jurors quickly convicted all of the defendants. They will be sentenced next week. No one expects the judge to display any leniency toward them.

After the verdict, Forst told The Guardian, “Defendants should be allowed to explain why they have decided to use non-conventional but yet peaceful forms of action, like civil disobedience, when they engage in environmental protest.” He added that climate protesters are facing persecution in many countries but the UK is unique in its enthusiasm for persecuting activists.

“[Elsewhere] you see environmental activists who block roads or sporting events being sentenced to a fine, or even sometimes suspended prison sentences for instance. However, while I don’t have a full picture of what’s happening in every country, the UK is a nightmare for climate activists from this point of view, in the sense that the sentences imposed in other countries are neither that harsh, nor that widespread. Facing several years of imprisonment for taking part in a Zoom call — this is something I have not seen anywhere else and it is shockingly disproportionate.”

The Takeaway

According to Monty Python, “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.” Neither is Section 14 of the Public Order Act. If what these defendants did is legally reprehensible, it pales in significance when compared to the harm done to the environment by fossil fuel companies, which have perpetrated the greatest fraud on the public in human history in the name of profits. Why are the leaders of the global energy companies not facing prison time for knowingly and willfully degrading the ability of humans to continue living on planet Earth? Once you have figured out the answer to that question, you will have a much deeper understanding of the relationship between the government and the governed.