“We are failing in that responsibility. If we say it’s an emergency, we have to act like it is.”
Starting Monday, the group hopes to see “high levels of disobedience” with more than 1,000 scientists worldwide taking part in direct non-violent action against government and academic institutions.
The world has seen a crescendo of deadly extreme weather amplified by rising temperatures — heatwaves, wildfires, flooding, storms engorged by rising seas — and a torrent of recent climate science projects worse to come.
Much of that research is distilled in periodic reports from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC).
Scientist Rebellion was founded in 2020 by two physics PhD students at St Andrews College in Scotland, inspired in part by the more broadly based Extinction Rebellion.
The group’s first significant action with more than 100 scientists, in March 2021, targeted the British Royal Society and science publishing behemoth Springer Nature.
“We basically pasted enlarged copies of their journal articles calling for rapid transformative change onto their offices,” said Kyle Topher, an environmental scientist from Australia and full-time activist for the group.
