Law Commons^™

Climate Change Disobedience, Charles R. Disalvo

Law Faculty Scholarship

Among those who recognize climate change as an existential threat, some are willing to take dramatic action against it by committing civil disobedience. Activists, such as those taking part in the Extinction Rebellion in the United Kingdom, are willing to exchange their liberty for some putative good. There is no discussion in the disobedience literature of the discrete purposes of climate disobedience or the principles by which climate activists ought to be guided in seeking to fulfill those purposes. This Article takes on that task. After offering an overview of the purposes of civil disobedience, this Article isolates those purposes …