DPhil student Sasha Arridge provides the 8th seminar for the 2023 Bitesize Ethics Programme.
Climate policy around the world lags dangerously behind where it needs to be if we are to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. This grim fact prompts two questions:
1. What can we do to bring about the required policy changes?
And
2. What ought we do to bring about these changes?
Many climate activist groups think that both questions can be answered with mass protest and non-violent civil disobedience: these activist tactics are both effective and morally permissible means to achieving sound climate policy. Recently, however, some prominent voices in the climate movement have argued that such tactics alone are ineffective: only the combination of these tactics with more direct action like ecotage – the targeted sabotage of property for environmental purposes – can be effective. Such thinking raises the possibility that questions 1 and 2 have different answers: even if ecotage is an effective means to the required policy changes, it might not be permissible. This class, then, will focus on the morality of direct climate actions like ecotage, and ask when, if ever, it might be permissible to blow up a pipeline for the sake of the climate.