A Climate of Repression, Daily Brief April 30, 2024

As our climate burns out of control, too many politicians are dithering – and worse.

I get it. Reality is hard. It requires difficult decisions. It’s so much easier for politicians to present a fantasy world, to deny or downplay the science of human-driven climate change. And when anyone rejects your fantasy thinking and demands climate action, you simply use state power to shut them up.

Governments are increasingly turning to repression against those calling on their leaders to take steps to address the climate crisis. They are threatening environmental defenders in many parts of the world, using intimidation, legal harassment, and, absurdly, counterterrorism laws against climate activists. Sometimes, they even resort to deadly violence.

In Australia’s state of New South Wales, for example, the government created a new law targeting protesters who block roads or ports. The bizarre result is that activists who temporarily inconvenienced some people have been sent to maximum security prisons for months – meanwhile, people committing violent crimes like assault can avoid being sent to jail altogether.  

In the UK, there’s also an ongoing crackdown on climate protesters. Recently enacted laws severely restrict people’s right to peaceful protest. In December, a peaceful climate protester who took part in a slow march on a public road for about 30 minutes, was sentenced to six months in prison.

Europe is likewise failing, with newly introduced repressive laws and practices in several countries. Authorities are targeting environmental movements, which are now sometimes labelled “terrorist threats,” and attacked them with legal prosecutions and police brutality.

A clampdown on environmental activism is happening elsewhere, too – Uganda, India, the list goes on.

But here’s the thing: repression doesn’t change the reality of the climate crisis. Harassment, arrests, imprisonment, killings... none of that slows humanity’s release of carbon into the atmosphere, which is the actual problem here.

Governments should be taking steps to address the climate crisis rather than spending time and effort violating the human rights of those drawing attention to it.