“Scientists are perfectly placed to lead a rebellion”: this is the watchword of the Scientist Rebellion collective, created in 2020, which brings together 200 researchers and academics from around the world. All have decided to take action in the face of the climate emergency.
This is just a new example. Among the demonstrators present this weekend in the Tarn to protest against the motorway project between Toulouse and Castres, there were Christophe Cassou. For this climatologist, director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), co-author of the 6th report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Giec), getting involved in this way is a first.
“Everywhere in the world, as we have entered the hard, we are witnessing a criminalization of climate activists, he explains. It is in our role as scientists to defend the freedom to challenge certain projects”. Christophe Cassou appeals to science, explaining that IPCC reports show that non-violent civil disobedience movements can accelerate awareness of “climate issues” and decision-making.
A global movement
Christophe Cassou is far from the only scientist to take this step. It is a global movement, one of whose figures is called Peter Kalmus. This American NASA climatologist went further: he handcuffed himself last year to the door of a bank, JP Morgan Chase, which generously finances gas and oil projects.
In tears, he explained that scientists are not listened to. He speaks of this action as taking risks for him: legal risk, risk of prosecution, since he has been arrested. But risk for his career probably also. “But we’ve been trying to alert you guys, for so many decades, he said. We will lose everything. We are not joking. We don’t lie. We don’t exaggerate”. Peter Kalmus predicts that more and more scientists will engage like him.
200 scientists grouped together in the collective “Scientist Rebellion”
Today, a year later, the “Scientists in Rebellion” movement claims 200 researchers and academics mobilized. Peter Kalmus is one of them. The fifteen people who stuck one of their hands on a car exhibited in Munich, at the headquarters of BMW a few months ago, too.
And this move to action is often a matter of conscience. “Will displaying myself as an ‘activist’ discredit my work as a scientist?”, “I thought about it a lot”. ‘I wish I didn’t have to do that’, are phrases that come up often. These scientists, who are sometimes accused of stepping out of a form of duty of neutrality, explain that their job is not just research, but also alerting, disseminating and defending scientific knowledge. .
“We can make a difference”explains the collective on its website. We exist in rich hubs of knowledge and expertise; we are well connected across the world and to decision makers; we have great platforms from which to inform, educate and rally others around the world, and we have implicit authority and legitimacy, which is the basis of political power. We must do what we can to stop the greatest destruction in human history.”. Passing on this message can be done, in a conference of course, but also, in the street, on a sidewalk. The form changes, but the content of the message, ultimately, not so much.