It was the kind of treatment once reserved for narco gangs. Last June, several young Germans woke up to police raiding their homes, seizing their laptops and freezing their bank accounts.
Their supposed crime? Blocking streets and disrupting events to call for urgent action on climate change in the hottest year on record.
The crackdown on Germany’s Last Generation movement is emblematic of a disturbing escalation of attacks on climate activists around the world of late. For many years, the fossil fuel industry and the governments that protect it promoted outright climate denial, seeking to undermine the science that made an irrefutable case to cut emissions.
But our research on climate activism over the last year shows that big emitters have shifted their tactics from denying science to repressing activists using raids, arrests, fines and even violence.
The goal is the same: to delay climate action until it’s too late. It’s therefore time to recognise repression of activism as a pernicious form of climate denial.
The ramping up of pressure on climate activists in the last year was particularly noticeable in wealthier countries. In Germany, police used laws meant to stop organised crime to justify the June raids. But Last Generation is not some shadowy criminal enterprise.
It works to bring young people together to call for practical solutions to cut greenhouse gas emissions faster, such as fixed public transport prices and reducing food waste.
Last Generation’s Zoe Ruge described the impacts of the government’s disproportionate response: “Activists are struggling because it’s scary to feel that the police could force their way in, search your home and take away whatever they want.”
A resilient movement
They’re the tip of the iceberg.
In the UK, the government has introduced new anti-protest laws that make it easier to jail people for disruptive or noisy protests. In the Netherlands, police detained thousands for joining roadblock protests calling on the government to end subsidies to fossil fuel corporations.
In Italy, the government passed a law to punish protesters judged to have damaged cultural sites. Australian states have also criminalised protests. In the US, which has a longer history of targeting environmentalists, police shot and killed activist ‘Tortuguita’ in an Atlanta forest.
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Linking the repression in both global north and south is the refusal by powerful economic and political interests to chart a different course on climate. The fossil fuel industry is determined to continue its lethal but lucrative business for as long as it can.
Views differ about the value of climate protest tactics like stunts targeting high-profile artworks. But no one could possibly construe such actions as violent.
When activists target museums, they take every possible precaution to ensure there’s no lasting damage. When they block roads, they allow emergency vehicles through. But authorities have falsely equated disruption with violence, a clear double standard when compared to the response to European farmers who also protest by blocking roads.
While our research points to a shift in tactics against climate action in the global north, climate activists in global south countries have long faced similar restrictions and worse.
Last year, police beat and arrested campaigners against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, a vast project linking Tanzania and Uganda. In Latin America, most of the at least 126 people killed last year for defending human rights were standing up to extractive and exploitative projects that cause climate and environmental harm.
Linking the repression in both global north and south is the refusal by powerful economic and political interests to chart a different course on climate. The fossil fuel industry – which sent at least 2,456 lobbyists to the last climate summit, COP28 – is determined to continue its lethal but lucrative business for as long as it can.
Governments are paying lip service to climate action but showing little willingness to rein in the industry and cut emissions. Activists know this and show this, which is why so many efforts are underway to silence them.
But despite the many constraints, the climate movement is resilient. When authorities froze Last Generation’s accounts, members of the public donated more money than was seized.
When police detained protesters in the Netherlands, many more showed up to the next demonstration. And despite the intimidation, activists in Uganda have continued their campaign to discourage financiers – at least 27 banks have so far pledged not to support the pipeline.
Climate activists will keep pushing on – but they don’t deserve the treatment they’re getting.
This story was published with permission from Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit https://www.context.news/.
