Zooming off to jail for climate activism

Better scrutinize the participants list on your next Zoom call. Five climate activists in the U.K. just got multi-year jail sentences for planning a peaceful demonstration that disrupted traffic. They were convicted of “conspiring to cause a public nuisance.” The Brits have always been good at absurdist comedy — now redefined as tragedy plus a judge in a ridiculous wig.

Judge Hehir sentenced one member of the group Just Stop Oil to five years, while the others were sentenced to four. United Nations rapporteur Michel Forst was shocked: “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 key piece of evidence was an organizing meeting recorded on Zoom. A reporter working for Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun snuck into the meeting and gave the recording to police.

The sentences set a new record for non-violent protest in the U.K, surpassing the three-year sentence given to another Just Stop Oil protestor who scaled the Queen Elizabeth II bridge over the Thames estuary.

As journalist Helena Horton noted, “Mug someone for their watch and you get no jail time, attend a Zoom call about a planned protest and you get five years in jail.” The average jail sentence given for actually committing violent crimes is 1.4 years in the U.K., four years for robberies and 5.5 for sexual offences.

“This is what you might expect in Russia or Egypt, not in a supposed democracy,” said George Monbiot.

Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather says he’s “disagreed vehemently with (Roger Hallam, co-founder of Just Stop Oil) on some things in the past, but a five-year jail sentence for organizing climate action is utterly disproportionate and a sign of a broader push to criminalize peaceful protest.”

Sir David King, the government’s former Chief Scientific Adviser, said, “This is so disgraceful. We are all hoping that the change in UK government will also change the situation in our courts.”

The jail sentences are especially surreal considering that recent change in government. The protestors' demands were adopted by the Labour Party. Two weeks ago, U.K. voters overwhelmingly elected Labour and its pledge to stop issuing drilling licences in the North Sea — exactly the reason the protestors created a nuisance on the M25 motorway in November 2022.

Conspiring to create a “public nuisance” doesn’t begin to describe the actions that receive no penalties at all. Geoff Dembicki revealed this week that the biggest American oil refiner (now called Marathon Petroleum) was warning internally that “carbon dioxide pollution” could lead to “widespread starvation and other social and economic calamities” — as far back as 1977. That’s more than a decade before the famous testimony by James Hansen in Congress.

Far from addressing the impact of its products, the company became “one of the leading forces in Washington opposing efforts to limit carbon pollution and fight climate change,” according to an open letter by US senators.

Marathon is frequently named in lawsuits accusing Big Oil of conspiring to deceive the public about their products. And the company is part of the consortium petitioning the Supreme Court to intervene against the lawsuits.

The movement to sue Big Oil for damages now includes cities, states and tribes accounting for 25 per cent of the U.S. population. On Thursday, Puerto Rico filed its own lawsuit: “They did not truthfully warn Puerto Rican consumers about the consequences of using and burning fossil fuels on the island, as well as their impact on the environment. It is time for them to mitigate the damage they have caused to Puerto Rico and not let Puerto Ricans foot the bill,” said Secretary of Justice Domingo Emanuelli Hernández.

Ontario hasn’t faced the same degree of devastation as Puerto Rico but certainly got a dose of “public nuisance” this week with massive flooding. “We really seriously have to deal with climate change,” said Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow. “Because these kinds of days are going to become a lot more frequent.”

Our infrastructure is very clearly not fit for planet. Over 1.3 billion litres of partially treated sewage flowed into Toronto’s waterways after the storm. Beaches are closed. And the region seems to be hoping for the gifts of solar power: “Much of the sewage… should be disinfected through exposure to UV through the sunlight,” officials ventured.

Last year, after a very long delay, the Ontario government finally released the Provincial Climate Change Impact Assessment it had commissioned. The Ford government had been sitting on the report for eight months, eventually posting its 530 pages to the web without notice or news release after the organization Seniors for Climate Action Now (SCAN) had campaigned for public release.

The report highlighted both flooding and heat waves. But the Ford government has "done a number of things that have made things worse from the perspective of climate change impact, and I don't think they (wanted) to draw attention to those things," said SCAN member Jennifer Penney.

"What we aren't seeing is urgency on the part of the province to address these risks. That's really what concerns me," Penney said at the time.

Since then, the Ford government has been exposed for conspiring to develop the Greenbelt and has openly weakened conservation authorities, ordering several to stop wetland mapping programs, just last week.

The flooding crisis will get worse without smarter infrastructure and nature-oriented land management, according to adaptation experts. Just last year, Environmental Defence calculated that 90 per cent of the sponge-like wetlands in southern Ontario have been lost to urban development and agriculture. The report was presciently titled “Flooding soon in a basement near you.”

And earlier this year, a coalition of 65 organizations warned that the Ford government’s “red tape cuts” would expand urban sprawl, compromising nature’s ability to absorb rainwater.

You may well remember the guffaws just three months ago, when Toronto had to cancel consultations over what was then derided as “the rain tax” to tackle the problem of impermeable surfaces throughout the city and offset costs of stormwater management and flooding — it suddenly doesn’t seem so silly today.

Prime Minister Trudeau responded to the flooding, saying: "The reality is... that with climate change, there are going to be more extreme weather events. So, we need to continue to step up in our fight against climate change. We also need to continue to be making investments in resilient infrastructure that can handle what the future is holding."

Premier Doug Ford had little to offer beyond an ill-timed reminder: “Did you know that this Friday, July 19 is Healthy Parks Healthy People Day,” he posted.

“Stay safe Toronto!” was all Pierre Poilievre could muster, quickly reverting to his core message of inflation, scapegoating the carbon tax and pitting climate action against affordability. Meanwhile, the insurance industry was estimating the single day of summer flooding would easily cost over $1 billion in damages.

In fact, at least 33 per cent of the inflation spike we’re suffering was caused by fossil fuel volatility, according to the intrepid International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), which persists in analyzing the cause of inflation. Only $0.03 of the 2022 jump in gas prices could be attributed to the price on carbon.

“Recognizing energy's crucial role in price stability, governments can and should champion policies to discourage fossil fuel use,” says Jessica Kelly, senior policy advisor at IISD and author of a new report on the subject. “This includes maintaining current actions such as carbon pricing, fuel taxation, and fossil fuel subsidy reform.”

The costs of renewable energy have dropped so dramatically over the past decade that Kelly calculates that Canada could save up to $15 billion per year, cutting average household energy expenses by $1,500 annually, if the country’s electricity grids transition to net-zero.

“Fossil fuels drive inflation and make life less affordable for Canadians,” writes Kelly. “Contrary to arguments that climate policy makes life less affordable, it is fossil fuels that keep consumers stuck on an energy price rollercoaster.”

Chris Hatch writes Canada's National Observer's celebrated Sunday newsletter, Zero Carbon. Chris is the former Executive Director of Rainforest Action Network as well as the former executive editor at Canada's National Observer. He is now a columnist at National Observer and writes the acclaimed Sunday newsletter, Zero Carbon.