Simon Wilson: The value of superglue climate-change protests

Extinction Rebellion climate protesters supporting members who appeared in court for willful damage to a building in Auckland. Photo / Dean Purcell

OPINION:

Back in 2019, Phil Kingston, who is now 85, superglued himself to the side of a train. He had been waiting at a station and when it pulled in he sat down on the platform and stuck his hand to the outside of a carriage. His friends Sue Parfitt, who is 79, and Martin Newell, who is a mere 54, climbed on top of the same train.

They were arrested, of course, and changed under the Malicious Damages Act, a law dating back to 1861 that specifically prohibits the obstruction of trains. In court last week, a jury found all three not guilty.

Extinction Rebellion climate protester Phil Kingston was arrested after super-glueing his hand to a train. Photo / AP

This was in London, where the three train-disrupters are members of climate-activist groups Extinction Rebellion (XR) and Christian Climate Action. Their aim was to stop the train on its way to the financial district, as a way "to symbolise how business as usual must be stopped from driving human civilisation to destruction".

Why did the jury let them off? The facts were not in dispute, but not just in the summary of what the protesters did.

The defence and prosecution jointly presented the jury with an agreed "set of facts" that included: "Climate change is a clear and imminent threat to human civilisation. It has become increasingly widely recognised that immediate substantial action needs to be taken in order to stabilise the climate at a temperature in which we can avoid massive and widespread loss of life."

Extinction Rebellion is active here, with the same commitment to non-violent civil disobedience. Photo / Georgina Campbell

The protesters told the jury they felt "compelled by their faith to take action and to protect God's creation and prevent runaway climate change". They believed they were exercising their legal right to protest.

The jury agreed, as had juries in other XR civil disobedience cases before them. There's a lot of public support for climate action in Britain.

What a beautiful summer. On Sunday a tūī bustled out of the air right in front of me to perch on the rim of a birdbath. Feathers iridescent, the ruff white and enormous, a long thin tongue darting out again and again to drink.

Some days at the lake where we swim, the water has been the colours of that tūī, blue patched with green, the afternoon sunlight glittering, the surface softly undulating from the wake of far-off boats. A heron, smoky blue, stalking its way along the edge of the sand, stopping to stare at us, its head impossibly thin, almost close enough to touch.

Maybe the birds are trying to tell us something.

And there was an inflatable white unicorn, bobbling in the water, sporting a perky pair of dayglo wings. If you want to say unicorns don't have wings, take it from me, it's a debate that's hard to win.

The blackberries were ripe and so plentiful someone made a pie. That's usually an Easter treat. There were no native bees buzzing around the flowers of the kanuka trees, high overhead. Usually, there are hundreds. Been and gone early, I hope, rather than not been at all.

Last year was the hottest on record says NIWA. Photo / Andrew Warner

When the sun shines it's easy to think it's hardly worth worrying. But it's only two summers since almost the entire North Island was covered in the dust and stubble of an awful drought; less than a year since that constant series of terrible floods began.

Last year was the hottest on record, says Niwa. The sixth-hottest worldwide, say Nasa and a consensus of other agencies. The last eight years have been the hottest eight since the late 1800s; 2016 and 2020 jointly hold the record. No change is expected this year.

The Met Service here introduced a "red warning" in 2019, to be used for the most extreme weather events. In 2021 there were three.

Unicorns aside, this is a pattern. Sea lice and jellyfish are now a hazard for ocean swimmers and so are sharks.

The movies are onto it: Don't Look Up's tale of incompetence and greed in the face of an asteroid set to destroy Earth is an unsubtle metaphor for climate change and the fact that it's funny doesn't stop it being scary.

The Met Office introduced a red warning in 2019. In 2021 there were three. Photo / Rachel Das

Novelists are definitely onto it, if you're still in search of some summer reading. Elizabeth Knox's 2019 fantasy The Absolute Book brilliantly co-opted the grand myths of fairies in service of a climate crisis parable.

Anthony Doerr did something similar with this season's literary marvel, Cloud Cuckoo Land. It's exhilarating, heartbreaking, brimming with delights in its alignment of ancient fable, medieval history and 20th century anxiety – all wrapped up in a near-future tale of looming catastrophe and a celebration of libraries and books.

All we need, Doerr's story suggests, is to be resilient, take our chances and try to be good. As his characters find, this challenge is not completely impossible.

If you read one book, as they say.

And if you do one thing? Is gluing yourself to the side of a train an effective way to combat climate change? It makes the news, it gets people talking, it helps to stress that this is urgent. They're all important.

If you pick the right train, it might even make getting to work a little bit harder for some of the people whose job is to make money from the destruction of the planet.

Extinction Rebellion is also active here, with the same commitment to non-violent civil disobedience.

Not all climate activists are impressed. Tina Stege, climate envoy from the Marshall Islands, who was at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, says it's a waste of time to stop other people going about their business.

She says the coming decade will "define human history", which is quite a statement from a person whose homeland was once used by the US as the site of 67 nuclear tests. The atolls of Bikini, Enewetak and Rongelap are all in the Marshall Islands.

Now, they face a different crisis. Seawater bubbles up through the land and some roads and buildings are flooded by every tide. Dengue fever has returned.

Stege was unimpressed by the Glasgow summit too, but she hasn't turned her back. What else could they do? "It's the only process we have," she says.

The Swedish academic Andreas Malm offers a different view. He doesn't think XR goes far enough. In his book How to Blow Up a Pipeline, he argues for action that is both more targeted and more disruptive. Forget conferences and commuter trains. Instead, work out how to harm the big polluters and really go for it.

Kirsten McDougall explores this idea in her disarmingly provocative new novel She's a Killer. It's the tale of a woman disappointed by life, and herself, who gets drawn into an eco-terrorist plot against the super-rich. In, of all places, the Wairarapa.

Meanwhile, Greenpeace leader Russel Norman says the Green Party is compromised by its agreement with Labour, and the Greens say they have successfully strengthened the Government's instinctively timid ideas. Perhaps both those things are true.

Of all the ways to make a difference, which are the most effective? Which are the ones we really need now? This debate will run right through this "defining decade". And then some.