Should climate protestors receive long jail sentences?

Just Stop Oil protestors in Central London. Photo by Alisdare Hickson.

If you're among those questioning the effectiveness of these disruptive climate protests, you're not alone.

For instance, a July 2023 survey revealed that 3 out of every 10 Britons agree with longer jail sentences for protestors.

According to Oscar Berglund of Bristol University, however, the majority of British public recognise the important role civil disobedience plays in liberal democracies and are not persuaded of the need for longer prison sentences for protesters.

This is supported by results from another survey in August 2024 revealing that 59 percent of respondents felt these sentences are too harsh.

Groups like Just Stop Oil (JSO), Insulate Britain and Extinction Rebellion (XR) are frequently in the news for disruptive protests including damaging artworks, invading sporting events, blocking roads and bridges, and vandalizing the buildings of fossil fuels businesses.

They are what Fisher and Renaghan describe as the environmental movement’s “radical flank” - predominantly white, female and highly educated - pursuing confrontational strategies and tactics.

Their protests capture media attention (the primary goal) and inevitably news presenters question the ethical basis for their actions. For example, concerns are often raised about blocked emergency vehicles and someone’s life put at risk (even though these groups operate “blue lights” policies).

These criticisms resonate because almost everyone would be furious if a family member or friend suffered as a consequence of this kind of protest. The result is public resentment and questioning of the protesters’ motivations which appear to lack empathy for those impacted.

Punishment for arrested protestors can be severe. In July 2024, five JSO activists received a collective sentence equivalent to 21 years in prison for conspiring to cause gridlock on the M25 motorway around London.

Two more JSO protestors were jailed in September 2024 (for 20 months and two years respectively) for throwing soup over Vincent van Gogh’s sunflowers in the National Gallery.

Protest in museums and art galleries have been particularly effective since these actions transcend vandalism and are seen as attacks on “cherished symbols of cultural validation.”

Method to their Madness

Actions by the “radical flank” are generally unpopular with the public. For example, 54 percent of those surveyed in a 2019 poll indicated that they opposed disruption of roads and public transport by Extinction Rebellion.

Two years later, in 2021, 49 percent of the public polled held a negative view of Extinction Rebellion. More recently, a July 2023 survey revealed that 63 percent of those surveyed had an unfavourable opinion of Just Stop Oil.

Several scholars have examined the activities of the radical flank in terms of their motivations, strategies, impacts, and group dynamics.

Francisco Garcia-Gibson from the London School of Economics, for example, has explored how some forms of protest may be “ineffective, uninclusive, undemocratic, and violent.” The ethics of their climate activism, according to Garcia-Gibson, is still a nascent area and is likely to remain a topic of intense public debate.

On the positive side, research by Markus Ostarek and his colleagues at the Social Change Lab has revealed how “increased awareness of a radical group as a result of a highly publicized non-violent disruptive protest can increase identification with and support for more moderate climate groups.”

However, author and science communicator Zion Lights argues that climate activists “need to find tactics that speak to people instead of annoying them. And if they really want to succeed, they need to heed their own advice and follow the science on how social movements work.”

Extinction Rebellions recognizes that it has failed to mobilize a mass social movement in support of climate action and is currently developing a new strategy. It is also revisiting the original “theory of change” that underpinned early protests.

A key area of XR’s activities that may need to be expanded relates to the way it engages with art and culture. In this context, the activities of the Red Rebel Brigade have been particularly effective.

Meanwhile, the radical flank will continue to push boundaries in an effort to increase awareness of the climate emergency. According to Sam Light, these groups have a very clear strategy to manipulate media attention through confrontation and by generating a “spectacle” in a way that conventional mass demonstrations are unable to do.

They key question here however is whether it may be possible for these “spectacles” to be more ethical in nature?

The Red Rebel Brigade at an Extinction Rebellion protest. Photo by Simon Evans.

Ethical Spectacles and Climate Activism

I first came across the term “ethical spectacle” in 2019 while completing our book on Ethical Cities. An ethical spectacle can be understood as a symbolic action that seeks to shift political culture towards progressive values – in the case of climate activism these would be values that accommodate rapid curtailment of fossil fuel related greenhouse gas emissions.

The term ethical spectacle was introduced by activists Andrew Boyd and Stephen Duncombe in a 2004 article on The Manufacture of Dissent: What the Left Can Learn from Las Vegas. They called for the tactical and strategic use of signs, symbols, myths and fantasies to advance progressive, democratic goals.

The idea of the ethical spectacle is presented as an alternative to the unethical spectacle that dominates our world as described by the Marxist philosopher Guy Debord in his 1967 masterpiece on the Society of the Spectacle.

In Debord’s spectacle, individual lived experience has been superseded by representations through media, advertising and the commodification of our lives. While Debord suggested we push back against these representations, Boyd and Duncombe argue for re-representation through “spectacular interventions” designed to be both ethical and emancipatory.

The notion of the ethical spectacle was taken forward by Duncombe in his 2007 book Dream: Reimagining Progress Politics in the Age of Fantasy. Duncombe revisited this idea in 2019 changing the title to Dream or Nightmare in reaction to the Trump Presidency (2017-2021).

Boyd and Duncombe were essentially directing their message toward activists and protests groups, and defined an ethical spectacle as having the following attributes

· participatory – actions should empower both participants and spectators (i.e., those who do not directly engage), with organizers as facilitators not leaders;

· open – actions should be responsive and adaptive to shifting contexts and ideas of the participants;

· transparent – actions need to engage the imagination of spectators, but should avoid tricking or deceiving them;

· realistic – using fantasy to illuminate and dramatize real-world power dynamics and social relations that otherwise remain hidden from sight, that is making visible the invisible; and

· utopian – celebrating the impossible, and therefore making the impossible, possible.

According to Duncombe such ethical spectacles are something we collectively create for our own enjoyment and empowerment. He explains that the challenge is to tie ethical spectacles into the “real dreams and desires of people – not the dreams and desires that progressives think they should, could, or “if they know what was good for them” would have but the ones people actually do have, no matter how trivial, politically incorrect, or even impossible they seem.”

Duncombe refrains from providing an example of the ideal ethical spectacle. Rather he suggests we need to become fearless dreamers pursuing realistic alternatives to the status quo. The goal is reality reconfigured in the context of ethically symbolic actions that remove invisible barriers currently constraining our dreams, thoughts and actions.

Both Boyd and Duncombe have spent the better part of their careers supporting activists and engaging in campaigns for social change. The latter is now a Professor of Media and Culture at New York University. He has recently published a new book reflecting upon the power of culture and art in bringing about progressive change.

Artistic Activism as an alternative to Art Vandalism

As highlighted above, the radical flank of climate protest engages in disruptive actions as the main means to grab media attention even if this is viewed negatively by the public and even if the protestors end up in jail. What is not clear, however, is where this is heading. As the climate emergency deepens, and if climate action is delayed, will the disruptions become ever more extreme?

In this context, perhaps there is merit in exploring Duncombe’s analysis of the effectiveness of artistic activism based on thirty years of practice. He argues that the aim of artistic activism, which takes many forms, is to bring about social change. That is how its success should be measured.

Duncombe explores various “theories of change” and proposes a set of tools to assist in the evaluation of “aeffectiveness” (his word combining affect and effect) of artistic activism. This includes a range of criteria such as level of public interest, degree of media attention, extent of media impact, forms of audience engagement, evidence of both emulation (is the idea copied?) and empowerment (do people engage in action?).

He believes that historically artistic activism has been very effective. The important challenge for artistic activists is to think through the intent behind their action and the desired outcomes since this makes for more effective activism and a better chance of creating social change.

The key takeaway from Duncombe’s work is recognition of the need to consider the ethical dimensions of any protest prior to engaging with it.

At present, the radical flank of climate protest is struggling to increase the number of people willing to be involved in climate activism. Research has revealed that there could be as many as 1.7 million people in the UK who are willing to take part in some form of climate activism. The question is whether artistic activism might offer them more opportunity to engage than artistic vandalism?

For Duncombe the challenge is how to make progressive dreams (in this instance the possibility of a fossil fuel free world) become popular. In “Dreams and Nightmares” he argues that it is no good if the dreams are locked inside our heads or sequestered in small circles of people. They need to be articulated and performed.

Only through a continuous and ever growing series of ethical spectacles designed to influence the very fabric and reality of daily life will it be possible to create significant change – an awakened transformation of mass society.

This is the role of the spectacle and the most important question, according to Duncombe, is whose ethics it embodies and whose dreams it expresses?

Throwing soup at Van Gogh's Sunflowers in October 2022. Photo Credit: Just Stop Oil