Last year Nikolas Mattheis argued on this blog that climate school strikes are acts of civil disobedience (rather than truancy), that pupils are entitled to this form of protest and that they should not be punished. I agree. Acts of civil disobedience by Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, Ende Gelände and similar movements cause substantial public dispute. However, a more radical and troubling question emerge from recent writings in political philosophy: Given the great injustice involved in climate change, are uncivil acts of resistance morally justified? In the following I will argue that most of them are not.
Author: Christian Baatz
With a background in environmental sciences, I mostly write on climate change and environmental issues more generally. My key topics are compensation, individual responsibility, climate engineering and, more recently, financing climate change adaptation. I hold a Ph.D. in philosophy and also work on human rights and global justice. Since 2012 I am based at Kiel University in Northern Germany at the Department of Philosophy.