Where does the climate movement go as dangers escalate, "campaigning space” is eroded, we’re exhausted and it feels like we are out of new ideas?

Four years ago…

In April 2022, I was arrested at a climate protest. In what was a month of high-profile scientific reports and stark statements about the “moral and economic madness” of wealthy countries pursuing new fossil fuels, the UK government had published an energy strategy setting out its intention to maximise the extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea. 

We met in a cafe, where I awkwardly sipped a peppermint tea, wondering whether I’d regret taking on more liquid... Once dozens of other scientists had arrived, the dimly-lit basement now pretty cramped, it was time to go.  We stopped in a quiet alleyway to distribute lab coats, placards, posters and pots of wallpaper paste, attracting some understandably puzzled stares from construction workers. Next thing I remember we were rushing up to the energy department, then pasting giant pages of and quotes from some of the most consequential scientific reports of all time onto the glass front of the building.

Eight of us superglued a hand to the glass. Why? The practical reason: to make us harder to remove, to make our protest and its message harder to ignore.  Symbolically, we were standing by the climate science the government seemed to be disregarding in its plans to allow oil companies extract “every last drop” of deadly fuel from beneath UK waters. But emotionally and personally… I did this because I felt desperate. I really didn’t know what else to do.  

“It possibly looks extreme or crazy or a bit mad.  For me this is a plan Z.  Everything else has been tried.”  said my friend Stuart, stuck to the glass next to me.  Referring to the failure of decades of scientific research, communication and advocacy to drive anywhere near enough change via the “proper channels”, his words gave a name to a film that was made about our actions that day,  Plan Z: From Lab Coats to Handcuffs.

The film

Louisa Jones’ and Vlad Morozov’s short film about that day captures it far better than I ever could in words, not just what took place but also the motivations, the emotions, the community and the care behind our actions. It’s toured the UK and film festivals across Europe since it was released. For the past year it’s also been available online (on YouTube) where thousands of people have watched it. 

I’ve been to about a dozen screenings, the most recent of which was at the British Science Festival in Southampton at the end of last month. This showing rounded off a two-year programme of events and discussions about the film, about climate protest and about scientists as activists. Each time I see the film, it takes me straight back to the surreal intensity of that day - Wednesday 13th April 2022 - one that’s etched into my memory, one that changed my life in multiple ways. So much so, that I’ve often found it pretty jarring to switch into communication mode to speak on panels immediately after it's screened. 

Throughout these two years, the questions audiences put to us after the film have consistently been: 

• about what happened next; 
• about the increasing repression of protest in the UK;
• about what we can do now at a time where climate impacts are on our doorsteps yet denial, delay, obstruction, misinformation, polarisation, fear and exhaustion stand in our way. 

So, in the rest of this post, I’ll summarise my thoughts on each of these.

What happened next

Nine of us were arrested, loaded into police vans, and taken away to spend the next 24 hours in custody*. I wrote about this part of the story in my chapter of our book Scientists on Survival: Personal Stories of Climate Action. It was… strange. Exhausting, uncomfortable, sad, isolating, revealing of a policing system fraught with prejudice†, inconsistencies and power imbalances, but also punctuated with moments of unexpected humanity. 

We were prosecuted, accused of “criminal damage” for the posters and people that had been stuck to the glass.  For what it’s worth, no damage was actually caused to the building - no trace of our action remained on those glass panels beyond our presence that day. Nonetheless, I think it was seven times in total we attended court. Even on a good day, procedures are simultaneously slow, confusing and chaotic.   Sometimes we waited around in overheating corridors only to be informed our case was no longer going to be heard that day. Scheduling conversations between court officials took hours. The CPS seemed to miss all their deadlines then would try to submit bizarre forms of ‘evidence’ last-minute. The prosecution argued that our actions were inherently ‘violent’ then showed footage and read statements that clearly demonstrated the opposite. It might have been comical were it not for the urgency of the underlying climate Emergency escalating day by day, nor for the thousands of cases - some with huge implications for the victims, defendants, families and communities involved -  waiting for their time in court.

To cut a long story short, we were all acquitted. My trial group didn’t even have to speak in our own defence after the magistrates ruled we had “no case to answer”. In my handwritten notes from court I’ve quoted one of them stating as part of the verdict that our prosecution for this protest could be viewed as “disproportionate interference with [our] rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression”. These rights are meant to be protected by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and via its incorporation into UK law via the Human Rights Act. 

The erosion of protest rights and campaigning ‘space’

As we left court for the final time in late 2022 our barrister congratulated us on our “good character remaining intact” - a distinctly lawyery way of celebrating our avoidance of any criminal convictions. But had our protest or the trial taken place today in 2026, I suspect the outcome would have been very different.

Firstly the laws have changed. Over the past four years the UK has introduced a slew of additional restrictions on protest, criminalising nonviolent tactics that have been used for centuries and imposing penalties widely described as repressive or draconian. To give just one relevant example, the 2023 Public Order Act made “locking on” - which would include attaching yourself to a building - an offence in itself in the context of a protest. It’s now punishable by up to six months in prison.  

Secondly, how the courts treat protest cases has become progressively more unpredictable, with harsher sentences and sometimes extreme restrictions on defendants becoming commonplace.  This has included:

• Legal defences disallowed. Defences based on principles such as necessity, proportionality and/or “reasonable excuse” - all of which we came prepared to argue - are often no longer available to defendants to use in similar protest cases.   
• Judges barring defendants from explaining their motivations and beliefs, or telling juries that these should be considered irrelevant. In one case, two Insulate Britain campaigners were sent to prison for contempt of court for defying a judge’s instruction not to say “climate change” or “fuel poverty”.
• Prison sentences of up to five years for activists accused of planning non-violent climate protests, and the use of remand (imprisonment before trial/conviction) becoming more common for peaceful protesters. 

There is so much more I could say (some of which I've written about elsewhere) about how our rights to protest have been eroded, including via increased use of civil injunctions, repressive bail conditions, surveillance and harassment, pre-emptive policing and arrests… the list goes on. The combination of all of these has an undeniable “chilling effect”: I regularly hear people express wanting to participate in protests but understandably staying away because they aren’t sure what is and isn’t within the law, they don’t trust how the police will behave, or they fear the consequences of being arrested - lawfully or otherwise. 

But this all just one visible component of a much more insidious stifling of peaceful activism and campaigning happening here in the UK and I’m sure far beyond it too. At a recent event that brought together a range of organisations involved in environmental and human rights advocacy, equality, anti-racism, refugee support, poverty action and more, I heard campaigners, civil servants and charity employees speak about how much harder it has become for them to work impactfully. They spoke about how funders and institutions are jumpy about supporting causes that until recently were relatively uncontroversial. Many had been targeted with threats, abuse, malicious lawsuits, or ‘weaponised admin’‡.  Media channels that were once key to amplifying their work and messages had rapidly become hellish, or just ineffective. Some have found themselves censored by managers and collaborators, or would knowingly censor themselves to avoid conflict§. All of this has happened in the space of a few years, and seems to be getting worse, fast.  

Meeting the moment?

The combination of intensifying climate breakdown with the wilful blunting of the tools we have to respond to it terrifies me. And I know I’m not alone.  Hard-won successes for the climate movement are now in danger of being - or already have been - reversed. In the UK, the government once again looks set to license new oil and gas fields.  Climate scientists’ warnings and robust dismantling of fossil fuel industry lines are falling on deaf or unwilling ears. The stakes are even higher than they were four years ago, but so too are the personal risks involved in challenging or disrupting powerful vested interests . On top of this, the capacity and effort required to do this effectively - and relatively safely - has increased significantly. 

It’s little wonder so many of us are feeling exhausted and disempowered. There are huge imbalances in power and risk, and these tend not to play out in favour of there being fairer societies and habitable Earth for them to exist upon. That balance can - and must - shift. But it can only do so if large numbers of us, especially those with comparatively more resources, influence and protection from harm, decide we have a role to play in improving our collective predicament, even if we know that the best “solutions” are no longer within reach. 

Recently, I’ve been finding tentatively-renewed energy in spaces where different people and organisations across movements and types of approach are coming together to confront this reality. And whilst I don’t have “the answer” to what needs to happen now, here are some of the insights I think I’ve gained from those discussions and from my own experiences: 

🐙 No “one thing” will “work”:  We need a diversity of complementary, creative approaches to problems as massive and complex as climate breakdown, systemic injustice and the erosion of our rights. Each of us brings different strengths, assets, constraints and vulnerabilities which will make us more or less suited to different forms of action. 

🦉 Knowing our rights and how to advocate for them is becoming increasingly essential.  Part of the “chilling effect” of repressive laws and restrictions is that it creates fear about speaking up or taking action in ways that are still within “the rules”. Knowing what those rules are and sharing that knowledge as widely as possible can help us plan our actions as safely as possible and support others to feel more confident in joining us.  Where we can confidently identify, communicate and/or challenge abuses of power, for example by police or employers, we are better equipped to protect ourselves and one another from them‖. 

 🤹 Being strategic with our capacity sometimes means doing “less”. Kind people have often cautioned me “it's a marathon not a sprint” when I’ve been in “action mode” for prolonged spells and the impacts are starting to show. For a long time this kind of advice grated, because I felt like it was undermining the urgency: “what if we need to be sprinting this particular marathon?”, I’d usually push back. But what I now understand they were trying to warn me, was that consistently exceeding your own limits can be destructive and is often at odds with sustaining effective action. It is not an easy balance to strike, but deciding not to do something that seems like it could be worthwhile can be the strategic choice, provided we are being honest with ourselves about our motivations and capacities. 

🫶 The power of community, care and collective action. Very few people have ever, or will ever, significantly change the course of our societies by themselves. Even where we have figureheads attached to great achievements, they are usually part of a much bigger ecosystem that has enabled those successes. My maybe-naive-maybe-a-bit-arrogant “lone crusades” have invariably been less effective, less sustainable and far less enjoyable than the campaigns, actions and projects I’ve worked on with others. The relationships forged in the process have been so rich and so supportive: they have sustained and informed so much of what

🐝  That I won’t regret trying, even if we don’t “succeed” in obvious ways. My friend Shana’s words in the final essay of our book are often ones I've quoted at the end of screenings and on panels. I hope it'll be clear why. 👇

* Or more - one scientist was denied bail (on spurious grounds) and spent several days in custody. 

† We were mostly treated with basic dignity by the police but we witnessed far less respectful, more aggressive treatment of others less privileged than ourselves. 

‡ This included, for example, public bodies being deluged with Freedom of Information requests designed to drain resources rather than to increase transparency and accountability genuinely in the public interest.

§ Contrary to what I‘d like to believe about myself, I realise I self-censor regularly in my work (as well as outside of it).  I really hesitated to share this post, particularly at a time where I’m actively looking for jobs/contracts, because I know organisations are increasingly wary of being perceived as “activist” (even if their stated reason for existing is to push for some form of progressive change).  In multiple projects and roles I’ve been involved in, we have (strategically?) shied away from talking directly about extremely important, relevant issues of systemic injustice, fearing that if we openly acknowledge these issues we will be immediately dismissed by influential people/groups. 

‖ For protest rights information in England and Wales, see the Green and Black Cross’s guides and trainings 

This morning when looking at job listings I came across an ”Environmental Scientist" freelance role - a  relatively rare sighting at the moment.  Clicking through to find out more, I then read the role was to find factual errors in AI-written science content, and write “clear feedback” for the models churning it out. When I looked up the company behind the ad, one of the first results was an article titled: “Laid-off lawyers, history PhDs, and scientists are now part of a miserable gig economy in which they’re teaching AI how to do their old jobs” (paywalled article). Months into the job hunt, nothing about that headline felt surprising. 

It’s not long ago that I didn’t have to search for work - I was fortunate enough that plenty of it came to me. When I left academia and started freelancing in 2024 I quickly found my time filled with paid projects and collaborations that felt positive, meaningful and a good use of my skills. But over the past year or so, the shifts have felt dramatic

Opportunities degrading

It’s no secret that the ‘job market’ right now is tough. In the UK there are over 1 million young people not in employment, education or training, and about 2 million unemployed people (and many times more besides) actively looking for work. Meanwhile, the numbers and types of jobs available aren’t matching the demand.  Many roles are also short term, casualised or otherwise precarious.

This decade promised a boom in “green” jobs, and it’s not hard to find openings that are very much styled as such.  But scratch beneath the surface of the advertisements and many-if-not-most aren’t exactly propelling us towards a sustainable and ethical future. 

Page one of the “jobs that match your profile” section on LinkedIn right now shows me:

🔥 Community & Education Officer… for the UK’s biggest carbon emitter 

✈️ Environmental Consultant… to support a company’s “growing aviation business” 

🫘 Writer/Journalist covering inequality and poverty… unpaid, two days per week.

🤖 Multiple roles training and expanding the use of AI (like the “Environmental Scientist” role above)

Alongside this I’m getting plenty of targeted advertising for unspecified career opportunities at oil companies* (and a few times for the military or the Metropolitan police). Let’s just say the roles out there and how I’d want to be applying my skills often aren’t a “good fit”, and I’m fairly confident that I wouldn’t make it as far as the interview if I applied. 

When there’s so much that we actually need to do to spread reliable information, protect our planetary health, transform our systems, and adapt to an increasingly unstable world, it’s alarming how few-and-far-between the roles aligned with doing this seem to be right now. 



Hiring procedures

This is not to say that there aren’t great-looking roles out there and positively influential organisations eager to recruit. But funding across many parts of the environmental sector has been drying up and there is high demand for any positions advertised. 

Some application platforms will tell you how many people have read the job advert and/or how many applications have been submitted.  And it's not uncommon to be amongst thousands of applicants, even for quite specialised roles. 

I feel for hiring teams having to filter and evaluate so many applications. I can also understand how such demand breeds processes that are less kind to applicants. These include:

• 📋 Bespoke processes and complex forms. Gone are the days of firing off a standard CV and tweaked cover letters to several roles: each now asks for different information in different formats. I did one form that took 3 hours to complete even after I’d drafted the responses to the long-answer questions. 
• 🤖 AI filtering or even AI interviews.  I now write applications knowing that there is a strong chance it won’t be a human who ‘decides’ whether I progress to the next round of the process.  
• 🏋️ Work as part of the application. A task-based component to an application makes sense for a lot of roles and I’m seeing this become a lot more common. However it can really add to the time and effort required for an application. In the (rare!) best cases, tasks are paid/compensated as work… in the worst I have or wondered whether a real job opening even exists and the tasks are cynically used for free labour. 
• ❌ No capacity for feedback. Rejections are almost always accompanied by a request that applicants not inquire further about them. †

Looking for work and being judged by prospective employers, funders or collaborators has never been fun, but it feels far more gruelling and impersonal than it ever has before.  I’ve been selective and only applied for roles where I meet all the criteria.  Each application is different, but they usually take me a day or two. Over the past few months I’ve applied for about 35 roles and have yet to progress beyond the first round. 



What now?

Knowing that freelancing would have peaks and troughs, I made preparations for periods without regular work. The reserves from last year’s projects alongside short term projects have allowed me to cover the time I’ve been using to apply for jobs this year so far.  It’s been stressful, haphazard and insecure‡ but it’s been manageable (and I have loved some of the projects I’ve been trusted to do). But I’m now at the end of those reserves and I’m not sure what to do.  

I didn’t write this just to whinge… I wrote it to explain how it probably feels to many people who are trying to find meaningful work in an increasingly hostile job/funding landscape.  My experiences are far from unique, and if anyone reading this is relating to them then I hope you know that you’re not alone, nor can you measure your worth by how easy you're finding it to land decent-quality, paid work.  I also wrote this to elicit any ideas and advice that might be out there. 

Specifically I’m looking for insights into:

• How and where to search for opportunities. I’m on a range of job boards and mailing lists, and friends have been great at passing on listings they happen across, but are there other routes I might not have thought of? 
• How to look for independent funding.  I’m really enthusiastic to create the kind of opportunities that I wish existed. I made a few applications to funding pots but didn’t get anywhere, so I’d be keen to hear ideas about potential funders and advice on how to increase the ‘fundability’ of proposals. 
• How I present my work and approach.  Are there aspects of this that might be standing in the way of good opportunities?  Are there compromises I might want to consider? Are there skills I’d do well to invest in? 
• Connections and support that might help this process along. I’m most interested in collaborative projects that use science, research and/or communication skills to help build a more sustainable and resilient future, but open to broadening beyond that. 



* My least favourite but most-consistently shown to me on social media earlier this year highlighted many ways Shell provides careers for women in STEM!

† One thing I think has improved in recent years is that I do generally receive a response to applications (rather than just having to assume silence means rejection).

‡ Not helped by several instances of not getting paid (sometimes for reasons beyond clients’/employers control)

It's been more than a year since I first drafted a post trying to express why the rapid integration of AI across work and society - and especially its normalisation in environmental communication - feels so eerie and uncomfortable. Maybe I didn't finish or publish it back then because I was quietly hopeful that the hype wouldn't last or that the loudest voices would be more critical of the 'AI boom' (or maybe more aligned with my own perspective on it)...

But I’m writing this now for three practical reasons: 

1. 📋 To summarise the main concerns I have about ubiquitous, unregulated AI becoming so quickly integrated across society with the idea that short summaries of the issues in each area would be a useful to anyone - either as an overview or as a starting point for deeper research or communication.
2. 🤖 To address the dominant pro-AI arguments I’m now hearing all over the place - from my work contexts to chats with strangers at weddings in the hope this can contribute to us all having more constructive, critical conversations about AI, however much we have or have not embraced it.
3. 💭 To share my approach to AI to explain my stance to people interested in working together, and to highlight some of the actions we can all take to challenge and limit the harm AI is contributing to.

… and also for a more emotional reason:

• 🫀 Seeing so much pro-AI content - and a wide acceptance of it - is really, really getting me down. If this does nothing else but show to somebody out there that they're not alone in feeling concern, frustration, confusion (amongst other emotions), it will have been worthwhile.

AI is affecting me personally and professionally. Over the past year alone I’ve seen my own writing used to train models that have then ‘replaced’ the paid roles I used to feel confident I was having a positive impact doing (and used to be able to rely on for the rent!). I’ve seen a massive downturn in the quality and availability of writing and research roles, with an increasing proportion of opportunities in sustainability explicitly prioritising the use of AI within them. I'm fairly sure I’ve received AI-generated rejection emails off the back of job applications I’m not convinced a human ever read. Where I have managed to pick up work, I’ve sometimes been given frustrating AI-written tasks that don’t make sense or aren’t possible to complete due to ‘hallucinations’ within them. I’ve been asked to test supposedly 'groundbreaking' AI platforms that do nothing to address any of the major problems I come up against in sustainability communication or action. 

But this is much bigger than me. The rise of AI affects all of us, especially if we care about the Earth remaining habitable and want to see fair, equitable societies existing upon it. 

What do you mean by AI?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used to refer to a whole host of different computational systems that process lots of data. Throughout the 2010s, most of what I was hearing about as “AI” was in academic meetings, usually where researchers were using machine learning approaches to discover patterns hidden deep within large datasets.  Those ‘traditional’ systems were (and still are) doing things that humans could not do without them, for example finding tiny regions of similarity in the medical scans of thousands of patients with the same disease and applying that learning to inform the diagnosis of others.

What we have seen recently is a huge explosion of AI with a much broader scope: replicating - or attempting to replicate - human reasoning, decision-making or creativity for tasks that humans could already do without it. It's these applications I will be referring to when I talk about “AI” here, primarily ‘smart’ tools and features such as AI agents, chatbots, image/video generators etc that generate ‘content’ upon command.



The loudest narratives

Despite all of these causes for concern and caution, we are now exposed to a range of arguments, often made uncritically, about why we should embrace AI’s increasing entanglement into our lives. These narratives are used to shut down challenges to the rapid normalisation and pervasive integration of AI across society; they’re being used to delay action to regulate or even properly discuss how and where AI is used. 

It can feel exhausting and alienating to be on the receiving end of these narratives and to have very legitimate concerns be dismissed. But we don’t have to do this alone. So, in the interest of sharing some learning from my (often failed) attempts to have more constructive conversations about AI, here are the most common discourses I’m brushing up against, alongside how I’ve been responding.

Note: One provocation to anyone whose instinct is to dismiss the concerns above or the responses below, is to ask who benefits the most when we do so: who are these pro-AI narratives really serving?

What can we do about AI?

1. ⁉️ Communicate & Question: It can feel from all the advertising, LinkedIn chat etc like everybody is on board with it, but the more I talk with people the more I realise that there is widespread concern and skepticism about the AI boom. I also think that the rise of AI will continue to gather pace and wreak havoc in its wake if we don’t challenge the myths and the hype that are being touted. We don’t have to be experts to that bold claims are evidenced, or to probe about how much attention and consideration is being given to the very real harms and risks.
2. ❎ Refrain or Abstain where we can: We can each be critical and considerate about whether our own use of AI tools aligns with our values and/or is worth any of the negative impacts it contributes to. Personally I avoid knowingly using it, supporting it and feeding it… I don’t need to use it and I haven’t found a good enough reason for me to start incorporating it into anything I’m doing. This doesn’t have to mean ignoring it nor being completely closed-minded to any potentially positive applications. 
3. ✊ Campaign & Resist: We are most effective when we work together, as evidenced by the groundswell of grassroots organising against AI data centre expansions that threaten to drain the water, pollute the air and compromise power supplies for communities around the world.  There are broader campaigns gathering momentum too and they are undoubtedly looking for more support. Some examples are Pause AI, Pull the Plug & Stop Killer Robots.

Thoughts, suggestions or recommended resources? Let me know and I'll include them here.

In the meantime you may be interested in John Oliver's recent segment about AI chatbots, want to follow Ketan Joshi for commentary or find this massive list of articles useful.

At the time writing in 2023, from my then position as a postdoctoral research scientist based in a university, I introduced the chapter and my motivations for writing it as follows:



“UK universities and research institutes have been centres of my own education and work for half my lifetime. Since 2019, I’ve tried to balance a scientific research career with communicating and acting on the warnings of climate and environmental scientists. In that time I have encountered significant resistance to the idea that scientists and their institutions can – and should – use our privileged positions to contribute to rapid systemic change. I often hear that something else is more important, it’s too difficult, or it’s somehow not our place to try. By distilling some of what I’ve learned as part of the scientist/activist community, I hope to counter some of those narratives and motivate others to embrace pushing for environmental and social justice as part of the role of 21st century scientists."



Matching Rhetoric with Action

Centres of scientific research – such as universities and research institutes – exist to generate and disseminate knowledge often with the stated aim of improving lives and societies. These institutions often pride themselves on being host to, and developers of, thousands of minds trained to understand and communicate complex problems and innovate to solve them. But is this what the scientific institutions of today are really prioritising or achieving? And are they responding effectively to the escalating threats of climate, ecological and societal breakdown?

Over recent years many institutions have made public declarations of a state of Climate Emergency and announced ambitions to be part of solutions. But how much evidence is there of these same institutions realigning their practices and priorities proportionate with emergency action? Working in a place like this you may well have seen stickers reminding you to turn equipment off, a reusable cup scheme, awards for sustainable practice on the walls. But has your daily reality noticeably changed? Is what you research and how you do so largely similar to how it was before environmental sustainability was part of the discourse? Have you and your colleagues received any training to help you understand the scale of the biospheric emergency we are part of, and what we can do about it? Are conversations about how our academic systems can/should/must respond in a rapidly changing world part of your experience at all?

How can the transformative potential of science and scientists be unlocked? Institutions’ current modes of operation tend to stifle the changes needed to do so, but it is also within their power to facilitate and nurture cultural shifts. This needs to go far beyond reminders to turn off equipment and the elimination of single-use coffee cups; true sustainability in research requires seeing the big picture and embracing commensurate systemic change in how we work and what we value. This will mean realignment of the priority areas of research and teaching, a more holistic approach to mitigating the harms caused by our activities (explored in other sections of the book) and also looking to expand our conception of the institute’s role – acting as a hub for collaboration, a resource for wider communities and a fertile ground for empowering advocates and change-makers.

Scientists’ Privilege, Power and Responsibility to Accelerate Systemic Change

At its core the job of a scientist or academic is to pursue knowledge that enables us to understand specific elements of the world we are part of. Inevitably this involves evaluating and integrating information from a range of sources and disciplines, distilling what we learn into messages and principles that can be usefully shared. As such we have much of the expertise needed to comprehend and communicate the threats that all life and societies now face. When scientists publicly sound the alarm, or otherwise act to address the biospheric crises, we can be powerful messengers and advocates because of the position of trust and/or authority that is often afforded to us. We can find that our words and actions have a wider reach and a greater resonance as scientists than they would do otherwise. We might find we have greater access to platforms of communication, and that our taking action lends legitimacy to environmental movements that can suffer from unhelpful stereotyping about who it is that cares and participates.

Scientists have been warning for decades that human actions are driving irreversible and escalating climate and biodiversity threats. Could, and should, the wider scientific community be mobilising as a result, showing solidarity with the scientists who have raised alarm, and acting on the basis of the findings of our colleagues around the world? Can we expect these warnings to be listened to if we do not? Do we have greater responsibility to do so, given our privileged position to be able to understand these complex crises and our power to contribute to systemic change? What does it mean for our own role, the impact of our work and the existence of the structures that allow us to do scientific research if we do not see the kind of transformative action that is needed to protect societies as we know them from collapse? After all, there’s “no research on a dead planet”.

Scientific Institutions as Hubs for Environmental Learning and Communication

To respond proportionately to the climate & ecological emergency, institutions must do much more than replace lightbulbs and nudge their employees to make small behavioural adjustments. By taking a more systemic view, we can see that there are many more-impactful actions open to scientific institutions (summarised in Figure 1). Institutions and their funders need to turn their attention towards what research areas they prioritise and whether those make sense in the context of the biospheric emergency. In early 2020, scientists across many disciplines were rapidly re-mobilised in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.* Can we build on that experience to support the realignment of scientific research focus, centring the pursuit of the knowledge needed for societies to mitigate and adapt to climate and ecological breakdown? Key to achieving this will be institutional support for researchers to learn about the threats we face and – informed by that knowledge – apply our skills in new areas. Institutions, many of which are publicly funded, could also be playing a much more public role in supporting societal responses. This includes opening their doors to, supporting, learning from, collaborating, communicating, and sharing resources with local communities, under-represented groups and grassroots movements. Importantly, institutes stand to hugely increase their societal impact by cultivating conditions where their members are encouraged and empowered to be visible and effective advocates for environmental education and action.

Figure 1: Actions scientific research institutes can take to enable transformative change in the age of climate and ecological breakdown.





Collective Action by Scientists Holds Unrealised Potential to Accelerate Systemic Change

As individuals subject to the specific pressures of academic research careers, pushing the structures we operate within to improve can often feel frustrating and futile. Whilst there is much we can do as individuals to challenge harmful practices, signpost better ones and lead by example with our own choices (see Figure 2), we are more effective when we organise! Joining or forming climate action groups and unions can enable us to amplify calls for systemic change whilst reducing the work required and/or risk inherent in doing so. Collective action also creates communities that are ripe for learning, connection, and support. As scientists we can play valuable roles in the wider environmental movement, providing and receiving evidence and education, acting as trusted messengers and contributing to building fairer, more resilient alternative systems. As threats to a liveable future mount rapidly, what are we waiting for?

Figure 2: Actions research scientists can take to be part of transformative change in the age of climate and ecological breakdown.”

*I was one of these scientists…within weeks of the pandemic’s spread in the UK my biologist colleagues and I found ourselves studying the SARS-CoV2 virus, designing and running testing pipelines, communicating with the public, health providers and politicians and more. This was supported – and often celebrated – by our employers, funders and government.

Reflections on an evening at the Royal Society

“Responsible science activism” was the topic of discussion at a Foundation for Science and Technology event at the Royal Society in London this week. Three scientist activists - Dr Charlie Gardner, Prof Jeff Waage and myself - were invited to share the motivations behind our actions, setting out our perspectives on how the scientific community can respond effectively to the escalating Emergency and why it is vital that we do. The challenges, comments and questions that followed ranged from constructive, thoughtful, insightful to troubling and harmful. Constraints of the format meant that we couldn’t examine more than a few there and then....so I’d like to take the opportunity to share some reflections here now. 

The harmful narratives

Within the walls of this 365 year old institution, with all its grandeur and prestige, it was no surprise to be met with some hostility having challenged the ‘established’ way of being a scientist through our activism. Whilst we acknowledged the value of the ‘traditional’ routes for scientists to engage with politicians and the wider public, we know that on their own they’ve been insufficient to drive the kind of change necessary to prevent the existential danger every person and every species now faces. So the question is what do we do now? How does the scientific community’s approach need to evolve and expand to inform and energise a society-wide Emergency response at a time this is so desperately needed?

I remember how deeply uncomfortable it felt years ago grappling not just with how serious a predicament humanity is in, but also with how profoundly that changed how I felt about my own achievements, priorities and ambitions especially in relation to a scientific career that formed such a strong part of my identity. So I can empathise with a broad spectrum of defensive reactions. But however charitable I try to be, the tone of some of what was levelled against scientist activism and environmental action more broadly at this event has added to my frustration and disillusionment with our institutions. 

I had expected plenty of critique about the role and perception of scientists as activists, but I was less prepared (and more alarmed) to notice the prevalence of recognisable ‘discourses of delay’: narratives leveraged - knowingly or unwittingly - as reasons not to act robustly to stave off climate, ecological and consequent societal collapse.

These included:

❌ Deflecting responsibility.

We heard politics and voting framed as the most (or potentially only) effective way to bring about change, with sweeping assertions made about the actions and priorities of the wider public e.g. that they “vote against the interests of younger people” and more generally that climate action is unpopular and thus unachievable. Even if this were true (which it isn’t*), perceived apathy and lack of care by others is no justification for replicating this ourselves, especially as scientists who are in a prime, privileged and trusted position to recognise the severity of the issues, communicate them effectively, and act constructively, bravely and creatively in response.

❌ Casting doubt on the urgent need for transformative action.

At points I really wondered whether some of the senior figures who spoke had anything close to a broad and up-to-date knowledge of the science underlying the Emergency. We heard arguments often made in favour of fossil fuel use that made me wonder whether their proponents even knew how far beyond safe limits we already are, let alone what it means for our near-term survival that heating and its impacts have accelerated and will continue to do so especially now tipping points have been crossed. Our arguments as to why we view it as is proportionate and effective for scientists to take bolder, more vigorous action were dismissed quite casually; the vibe I felt emanating from the more vocal members of the scientific establishment was dispassionate and complacent, entirely misaligned with the enormity of the danger.

❌ Emphasising potential costs of action disproportionately in the context of the hugely higher cost of continued delay. Incredibly, “intergenerational equity” was seemingly used as a reason not to pour resources into rapid decarbonisation, positioning action taken to protect future generations as incompatible with meeting the needs of people alive today. Were it not the case that a rapid worldwide transition to renewables is now considered feasible and highly cost effective, or were it not the case that energy efficiency, pollution reduction and nature restoration come with substantial health and wellbeing benefits, this still wouldn’t be a defensible position when millions are already experiencing the devastating, avoidable impacts of a lack of Emergency mitigation and adaptation.**

❌ Defeatism dressed up as realism.

Encapsulating this were the very final words from the panel: “I’m afraid Thomas Malthus was probably right”. What a choice that is from a respected figure of authority in science, to end by referencing 18th century predictions of mass starvation caused by population growth… rather than to end with a call to action that scientists try everything we [responsibly] can to intervene in today’s unfolding climate and ecological catastrophes.



A figure from my infographics deck, based on the typography established by Lamb et al. mapping the most common narratives used to delay climate action. 



As anticipated there were also plenty of criticisms of activism and activists e.g. that disruptive action is counterproductive, that by taking action using our scientist identities that we’re implying we are somehow superior etc etc, which I at least felt we were able to push back on at the time***. But in doing so we didn’t have the opportunity to give the wealth of constructive contributions and questions from the rest of the audience the airtime they deserved.

The constructive questions

I've felt heartened by the many positive and supportive interactions that were also part the event and its aftermath. These came from a broad range of representatives across science and policy, many of whom were keen to share how their own views did not align with the ones I have described here as harmful. Conversations about various experiences trying to create change within different roles, workplaces and contexts have continued throughout the week and I'm grateful for the new connections, insights and potential collaborations this has sparked. Some of the questions raised that I would have loved there to have been more discussion of at the event itself related to themes like:

🚧 How to address structural barriers to scientists participating in activism

This would have been a great opportunity to talk about the various issues affecting the science and education sector and how they might be overcome in ways that enable climate and social action as well as benefitting research and scientists themselves, drawing on the ideas such as the academic doughnut and work around how universities etc can facilitate advocacy and activism.

🛡️ How mounting attacks on, and declining trust in, science can be countered

The societal and political drivers of this are complex and something scientists are often quite naive to, but they are crucial for us to grapple with and confront. Emerging insights from scientists who have had to deal with such attacks for a long time (e.g. climate researchers, vaccine advocates etc) feel especially valuable to learn from here. 

🤳 How scientists can interface more effectively with the media and the public

News content around the Emergency has long been problematic, and as the crisis gets more severe, coverage appears to be declining in both volume and quality. Meanwhile climate misinformation on social media is surging. Debunking myths is an important skill but ‘innoculation’ against disinformation is perhaps an even more important work that scientists can be involved in too. I wrote about what I think makes effective Emergency science communication recently here, but ultimately actions speak louder than words, which is a huge part of our case that scientists be bolder and more visible as activists. 

✨ Leadership and role modelling from scientists and their institutions

This could have been an opportunity for rich discussion on how research institutes can transform to rise to the challenges of our times, and to talk about the behaviour change research on leading by example, (e.g. in low-carbon transitions). 

Photographs from the during the event (left) and afterwards with some of my favourite 'responsible science activists' (right). 



Personal Reflections

Across the breadth of the scientific community we do have common ground: we recognise climate and ecological breakdown as serious threats and that current action is insufficient. What constitutes appropriate and responsible, productive actions is nuanced and was always going to generate some disagreement…. but I was much less troubled by this than I was by what felt like a palpable lack of collective urgency and commitment to transformative action. Most concerning to me was where harmful - not to mention inaccurate, misleading and/or and unevidenced - delay narratives were coming from: the proponents of these ideas were scientists currently or previously in leadership roles within academic institutions, learned societies and/or policymaking. And they were some of the loudest, most confident and most influential voices in the room. 

I’m left questioning more deeply than ever the role of our institutions and those chosen to lead them. Most have undeniably positive intentions - my former workplace aspired to be a “University for Public Good” whilst the Royal Society positions itself as proponent of science “for the benefit of humanity”. They could be playing a key role in informing and enabling necessary, systemic changes… but as a result of embedded resistance to adapting and evolving as the world around us profoundly changes, how many are doing more harm than good? 

At the end of National Emergency Briefing in November, Prof Mike Berners-Lee urged senior figures in politics to be truly honest with themselves, and to step aside if they weren’t up to the job of leading with integrity and courage in the knowledge of how much danger we are all in. If we want our scientific institutions’ aspirations to translate into impact, I think we should be bringing this ultimatum to their leaders too. We can’t yet rely on our institutions - nor can we afford to wait for them - to change by themselves. To unlock their potential we have to apply pressure strategically, working in collaboration with the allies we find both within and on the outside of them. And as we do this, there are so many opportunities to contribute our skills as scientists in every movement and every community that needs them.  

* Polls and studies repeatedly show that concern remains high about environmental issues, that the vast majority of the UK want stronger climate action, and that willingness to take various forms of action is widely underestimated

** To list but a few examples ”climate-related disasters forcibly displaced 250 million people globally over the past decade”, “hundreds of millions of people are unable to safely go about their daily lives at the hottest times of the year”, “costs of heatwaves, droughts, and floods across the EU in summer 2025 reached €43 billion and could climb to €126 billion by 2029”, “climate change-induced food price shocks are on the rise leading to malnutrition, political upheaval and social unrest” … with the severity and range of all such impacts escalating all the time. 

*** See Charlie’s opening address for a snapshot of the evidence for the power of social movements and disruptive protest, as well as research on the ‘radical flank’ effect. In the recording Jeff and I both respond to why we choose to identify ourselves as scientists in the course of our activism (and it's not that we think we are superior!)