Scientists in prison. Sixteen researchers, including five French, were arrested on Saturday, October 29, for sticking their hand to a BMW sports car exhibited in a showroom in Munich (Germany). A symbolic action by the Scientist Rebellion collective, an international movement of scientists against climate inaction. Tired of chronicling report after report of an announced ecological disaster, they decided to embark on actions of civil disobedience.
German justice has placed these scientists in pre-trial detention, until November 4 for some. Their arrest and the duration of this detention shocked the scientific community. Personalities such as climatologists Jean Jouzel and Christophe Cassou, economist Thomas Piketty and philosophers Dominique Bourg and Dominique Méda show their support in this text published by franceinfo.fr and signed by more than 800 scientists. They express themselves here freely.
On Saturday, several scientists from various countries peacefully settled into a sports car on display at the BMW show in Munich, a symbol of the consumerist system that condemns our world to misfortune. Why this action in this place? There is no need to fear some catastrophism, we are already faced with catastrophes: thousands of deaths in France this summer under repetitive heat waves, a megafire in Gironde, farmers struggling with the drought, more than ten millions of people thrown on the roads in Pakistan after the destruction of their habitats by an extraordinary monsoon… Types of events that were rather expected around the middle of the century.
Not only have we failed to meet the objective set by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed in 1992 – namely to avoid any “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”– but we have already reached a high degree of system disruption.
“Emitting extra carbon for the vainglory and promoting it at a trade fair constitutes an active and useless participation (there are other means of transport) in the destruction of the climate.”
The signatories of the tribuneon franceinfo.fr
Why this type of action? Don’t scientists have other ways to express themselves? For 30 years, the scientific community has been patiently carrying out its work of documenting the ongoing changes in the Earth’s climate and ecosystems, in the economy. Patiently, she speaks, in her usual media (journals, conferences, reports commissioned from experts), in a civilized tone, about things as frightening as large-scale climate change in a few decades (the previous spanned millennia), a sixth mass extinction, a disintegration of human societies. This type of communication is fully legitimate, but does not reach the general public enough… However, the mobilization of a large public around climate issues would force the public authorities to act commensurate with the issues. This is a condition for the success of the UNCAC and the COPs it organizes annually.
Why this change in tone this year and these actions of “scientists in rebellion”? We are coming to a turning point, and it is less and less possible to be patient and give political and economic decision-makers credit for good faith. The sixth IPCC report explained just over a year ago that meeting the target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C was still possible on paper, but required radical changes. from the next few months. Since then, the States have done nothing. Worse, the war in Ukraine has put the most polluting oil and gas projects back on track. The UN said last week that the window for action to meet 1.5°C “was closing rapidly” .
“Desperate in the face of inertia, even general indifference, in conflict with their public service mission which they see thus disavowed, these scientists have decided to alert the world by a non-violent and non-destructive symbolic action. Today today they are in prison in Munich.”
The signatories of the tribuneon franceinfo.fr
Can we dissociate the scientists who take part in this type of action (who would discredit themselves by revealing the nature of an activist rather than a researcher) from the rest of the academic community? Scientists who have participated in this type of action are not extremists. They didn’t come out of their comfort zone to do this out of a taste for action and media visibility. They have, for many of them, a professional practice through which they also try to act on the world. If some of them have also decided to act more demonstratively, it is because they are desperate to be heard.
“The fact that not all academics and scientists are demonstrating in front of BMWs at the same time does not mean that those who do are isolated, and that the rest of their professional community disapproves of them: not everyone can be in the same place at the same time.”
The signatories of the tribuneon franceinfo.fr
But a majority of academics and researchers are dismayed by the general indifference to the ongoing disaster: three-quarters of research staff believe that if things continue at the current rate, the world will experience a major ecological disaster. This majority could well from one day to another join the camp of those who protest in an increasingly disruptive way. Let’s not mistake the culprits. The problem is not the protest, but the general inaction, the despair of the world’s youth, of whom 3 out of 4 say they “frightened”by their future.
The first signatories:
Dominique Bourg, University of Lausanne
Pascal Vaillant, University of Paris Nord
Jean Jouzel, Pierre Simon Laplace Institute
Julia Steinberger, University of Lausanne
Christophe Cassou, CNRS, Toulouse
Wolfgang Cramer, CNRS – Mediterranean Institute of Biodiversity and Ecology
François Gemenne, University of Liège
Timothée Parrique, University of Lund
Éloi Laurent, OFCE (Sciences Po) / Stanford
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, CRH, EHESS
Christophe Bonneuil, CNRS, Paris
Johann Chapoutot, Sorbonne University
Dominique Méda, Paris Dauphine-PSL University
Thomas Piketty, Center for Economic and Social History François-Simiand
Isabelle Stengers, University of Brussels
Jacques Testart, INSERM
Kevin Jean, National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, Paris
Jérôme Santolini, Atomic Energy Commission
Milan Bouchet-Valat, National Institute for Demographic Studies, Aubervilliers
Florence Volaire, Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology, Montpellier
Anne Baillot, Le Mans University
Stephanie Mariette, INRAE, Bordeaux
Sophie Gerber, INRAE, Bordeaux
Victor Altmayer, Brain Institute, Paris
Julian Carrey, INSA Toulouse
Odin Marc, CNRS Geosciences Environment Toulouse
Alexandre Rambaud, AgroParisTech
Yves Goddéris, CNRS Geosciences Environment Toulouse
Xavier Capet, CNRS, LOCEAN, Pierre Simon Laplace Institute
Pierre-Henri Gouyon, National Museum of Natural History
Jérémie Cavé, IRD, Geosciences Environment Toulouse
Joan Cortinas, Center Emile Durkheim, innovator
Gabriel Malek, President Alter Kapitae
Marie-Antoinette Mélières, Grenoble University
Thibaud Griessinger, independent researcher
Philippe Abecassis, Sorbonne Paris North University
Davide Faranda, Pierre Simon Laplace Institute
Lara Elfjiva, CNRS – Political Anthropology Laboratory – EHESS
Annalisa Lendaro, CNRS – Certop
Sylvia Becerra, CNRS, GET
Joan Cortinas, CED, Bordeaux University
Rémi Douvenot, ENAC, Toulouse
Alice Meunier, CNRS, Paris
Laure Vieu, CNRS, Toulouse
Laure Teulières, University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès
Olivier Aumont, LOCEAN, Pierre and Simon Laplace Institute
Pierre Mathieu, University of Aix-Marseille
Céline Marty, University of Franche-Comté
Jean-Christophe Poully, University of Caen
Soizic Rochange, University of Toulouse
Find the complete list of signatories in this table: