Update: I was fired. I loved working at ORNL's Climate Change Science Institute and am devastated, but am also more determined and hopeful than ever. We have incredible power to affect change together.🌱
Yesterday I was arrested with scientists and activists in 13 countries in a coordinated blockade of private jet terminals. I was chained and glued to the gate leading to the tarmac with indigenous activist Dakota. 🧵
A colleague of mine reminded me today of this cool paper showing no correlation between career success indices and flying (only between wealth and flying). I take this as permission to refuse to fly, even for work.
@flyingless
@FlightFreeUSA
@ClimateHuman
Yesterday I stopped work on the Mountain Valley Pipeline. I locked to the drill, 79-year-old Marty Zinn locked to part of the track (she's under the umbrella), & four others were in foot locks blocking the entrance.
@stopthemvp
@ScientistRebel1
1/5
I feel like I'm constantly oscillating between hand-wringing rule-following scientist hat and fuck-this-broken-system activist hat. It's difficult on a lot of levels.
I still plan to continue with both research & activism, to the extent possible.
To my wonderful colleagues: My temporary affiliation is LSCE. Please use my personal rather than my work email, which I no longer have access to. Thank you for all of the support so far ♥️
Dear colleagues - I'm happy that I managed to present my posters, chair my sessions, host a pod, be elected co-chair of the Critical Zone Technical Committee, and see many of you before
@ClimateHuman
& I had our
#AGU22
badges taken away today for trying to mobilize our fellows
At the American Geophysical Union meeting in Chicago today Scientist Rebellion activists took action to raise the importance of scientists sounding the alarm on the climate crisis.
The message is simple - scientists must step out of the labs and take action onto the streets.
I would keep an open mind about the utility of diverse tactics, but agree that this was a great action. The global campaign to ban private jets is ongoing so get involved and help us end luxury emissions in 2023:
Since being fired for climate activism almost exactly 5 months ago, I've published 5 papers, co-organized a workshop, given invited talks at
@stanforddoerr
@EcossNau
, & done a BUNCH of activism.
I will not brake for institutional hand-wringing. And neither should you.
Another scientist may lose their job tomorrow.
@kielinstitute
is attempting to force
@GGrimalda
to fly home instead of take lower emissions alternatives, an act which goes against his deep commitment to step lightly on our vulnerable ecosystems.
@flyingless
@ScientistRebel1
I have thus completed my fieldwork. I have collected 1814 observations from 30 villages to study how exposure to globalisation and climate change affects egalitarianism in non-industrialised societies. I should be rejoiced, instead I am terribly sad. 133/
Yesterday I was arrested for blocking the route to the Met Gala. You can spot me in the line of seated people locked together toward the end of this video.
Wealth inequality is killing the planet and flattening that inequality is an integral part of the solution
#TaxTheRich
We did this action to highlight the disproportionate emissions produced by wealthy people and wealthy nations and the injustice of private air travel during this critical transitional period away from fossil fuels as an energy source.
For more than 40 years climate scientists have communicated the urgency of the climate crisis with pen and voice. It hasn’t worked to nearly the extent that we need. What else is left but our bodies and our freedom?
@latimes
Please visit to join our campaign and read more about our specific demands: 1) Ban private jets, 2) Tax Frequent Flyers, 3) Make polluters pay their climate debt to the global south, indigenous, and frontline communities.
Scientists' demands are simple: 1) transition from fossil fuels, 2) finance the global transition, 3) pay our climate debt, & 4) remove COP's fossil fuel lobbyists so that those of us who aren't making trillions of dollars destroying the planet can actually accomplish steps 1-3
1/6 Today over 650 scientists sent a letter to
@POTUS
outlining four key steps for meaningful, comprehensive, and scientifically necessary progress on climate action at the upcoming
@UNFCCC
international climate negotiations,
#COP28
.
🚨 Call for help 🚨 Our colleagues who protested on Nov 10 with us
@SRTurtleIsland
at the Teterboro private airport were given the maximum possible fine by a conservative judge. Help us pay their fines so we can continue the campaign to ban private jets:
Most of the climate movement agrees on much more important and fundamental points than we disagree. For example (hopefully):
(1) we have to stop burning fossil fuels
(2) we must take action
(3) a diversity of tactics is good
1/
@helenafricker
I think that people will believe scientists when we publicly join activists in the streets, lending them credibility and demonstrating that we comprehend the implications of our own research. When we remain unmoved we look to others like we don’t believe our own dire reports.
Teddy was locked to my right hand during this peaceful protest at the Met Gala (look at all those police!). One of the many purposes of nonviolent protest is to reveal the violence that pervades business as usual. We condemn that violence in the strongest possible terms.
New: Our friend Teddy was tackled & slammed, his head kneaded into the floor.
We came to Jackson Hole to face the Federal Reserve during the planet's most important economic symposium.
The Fed could end fossil finance today. Instead, they pour gasoline on the flames. 🧵
A lot of colleagues have asked me over the past month how they can help me (apart from, I hope, becoming activists themselves!) and I just wanted to let everyone know that I have funding to support my research coming from institutions that would rather stay out of the news. 1/4
So proud of John, Glenn, and
@doctor_in_black
for being part of the historic shutdown at the
@federalreserve
Organizers estimate around 150 arrests at this action, following yesterday’s march and a packed week of actions. 💚💚💚
BREAKING: Famed philanthropist
@abigaildisney
shuts down access to luxury private jets in East Hampton with veteran climate activists.
The 1% can try to hide in the Hamptons, but they can’t hide from the masses.
#TaxtheRich
#StormtheHamptons
@helenafricker
I was arrested twice this week in climate actions and the unspoken sense I got from climate activists was “Thank you” but also “Where have you been?” and “Where are the rest of you?”
This pipeline endangers hundreds of waterways, and would be responsible for 90 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. We cannot build this pipeline.
Listen to the science. Listen to your elders.
#YoungAndOldUnite
#NoMVP
5/5
The Mountain Valley Pipeline is 6 years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget due to brave activists like Bramble who are using their bodies to stop work. We can end fossil fuels. We can do it ourselves.
#NoMVP
Yesterday's blockade is ONGOING! The pipeline fighter who locked down yesterday morning spent the night in the pipeline easement.
There has been no work since locked herself to the mountain!
Excellent thread explaining the fuss about Lüzerath, a small village in Germany sitting atop 280 million metric tons of coal
@ScientistRebel1
@ExtinctionR
@AufstandLastGen
and others are there resisting an overwhelming and ominous police presence
h/t
@schipper_lisa
THREAD: What is going on in
#L
ützerath?
In Germany, a small village next to a giant coal mine has advanced to become an epicenter of the global struggle for climate justice. Today the eviction of the the village has started. But this is not "just" about a single village. 1/
Come with me as I make my way from Providence to San Fran on my
#traintoAGU
. The 3.5 day journey began at 7am today. I’ve been
#flyingless
since 2017, but this is a next level experiment with
@amtrak
. 🧵
Microbes are responsible for most of the major biogeochemical transformations that control our environment's response to climate change. This
#WorldEnvironmentDay2023
, check out our new
@ASMicrobiology
report on microbes in models & remaining challenges🦠🌍
Paris area bucket list suggestions? After 3 enriching years in France, I will head back to the USA at the end of this year to work at
@ORNL
. Excited for new colleagues, maintaining EU connections, and finally replacing “Postdoc” with “Scientist” on all fillable fields henceforth!
Marty summed up why we're doing this beautifully: "I have lived a long life at almost 80 years old; I want to help ensure that young people today and in the future have a chance to live a life too, and one that is worth living. I am acting for them. That is why...
2/5
Ok I'm kind of posing but the joy on my face is real. Yes, the
@IPCC_CH
report is dire & many already suffer. Yet, for me, there is no happier life than doing this work, and absorbing wisdom from the decades of experience present
@ThirdActOrg
@ThirdActVa
@billmckibben
PHOTOS: Climate activists including Deborah Kushner of
@ThirdActOrg
,
@ultracricket
of
@ScientistRebel1
, Peter Kalmus
@ClimateHuman
and Indigenous activists protested today at the Wilson Air Center to demand the banning of private jets.
Four were arrested after chaining selves.
...I came to stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Its sole purpose is to transport fracked natural gas mostly for export to foreign countries and make a lot of money for fossil fuel corporations and their owners—meanwhile further endangering the survival of all we know."
3/5
These elders are such an inspiration to me, as are all activists working to protect their land and water. The Greenbrier River, which the drill I was sitting on will travel underneath, is the longest undammed river in the eastern US.
4/5
It’s not just environmental activists, ask any climate scientist what a 280-million-ton-of-CO2 drilling project means for the future habitability of Earth
NEWS: The Biden administration has decided to authorize a mammoth ConocoPhillips oil project in Alaska, despite arguments from environmental activists who say it will push the world closer to climate catastrophe.
w
@JenniferJJacobs
Affiliation update for science folks: I have recently joined
@RoninInstitute
as a Research Scholar:
is a horizontally-organized independent scholarship institute centered around truth and empathy, asking scholars to explicitly 1/3
🔥 It's time to put an end to Wall Street's reckless financing of fossil fuels. Join us for the Summer of Heat to force Wall Street to put planet over profit.
🔗Learn how you can get involved at
#SummerOfHeat
#EndFossilFuels
And if you want to support the work that Scientist Rebellion does on Turtle Island (US & Canada) there are two monetary ways to do that
and one time-investing way to do that:
#AGU23
Recap Thread
I got on a train in Brunswick, ME on Dec 7, passing through Boston & changing in Chicago.
The train passed the snowy Rockies & Sierras, a herd of elk, a golden eagle perched by her nest, & lively conversation from nature-loving passengers.
@flyingless
Yesterday
@XRBoston
@SRTurtleIsland
sent a strong message to MA reps:
#TheScienceIsClear
Ban new fossil fuel infrastructure to keep the planet habitable
We interrupted a joint session to deliver our demands & occupied the state house for 6 hours until arrest. 1/4
Burning just the current fossil fuel reserves would drive warming over the Paris agreement goal of 1.5°C, accelerating the breakdown of our natural life-support systems. We simply cannot afford to keep drilling.
I'll be there.
BREAKING:
Today we share our plan with the world: we will blockade the White House Correspondents Dinner.
Biden pledged to end new fossil fuel leases on federal lands. Now he’s approving them faster than Trump.
We will rise up to fight this. Join us. Tell everyone you know. 🧵
The Supreme Court has voted to strike down Roe v. Wade, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito and obtained by POLITICO.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito writes.
Scientists and activists going to
#AGU23
(including me!) need your support - please help us bring a meaningful discussion about the fossil fuel industry, grassroots activism, & nonviolence training to this meeting:
Love and grief are inseparable - when I allow myself to grieve Earth’s suffering, I unearth love and appreciation for all that Earth provides, and this more than anything else prepares me to fight. (i.e., I love a good grief circle)
This is a march, but it is also (and in my opinion, primarily) an on-ramp to sustained activism. Sign up with a hub, go to the march (and the actions happening before and after), find your crew, and get to work.
I'm helping to organize a massive climate march in NYC on Sept 17 ahead of the UN climate summit. We scientists must unite with communities in taking action!
1️⃣Join our letter:
2️⃣March with us:
More info:
If you are a scientist with a 2023 resolution to join the grassroots climate movement, there are groups that you can join (e.g., )
@ScientistRebel1
@SRTurtleIsland
and
@ScientistsX
have campaigns with many roles: risk, support, train, divest, testify
@stanforddoerr
@EcossNau
If your institutions/governments/support structures are holding you back, join (or make) new support structures. Reach out to me, or to alternative institutes and climate groups that hold your values. Just start. Institutions of old will follow..slowly..as they do.
The physician in the mask at 0:28 rightly explaining that drilling has to stop opened her home to me for rest and regeneration while I was in town for
@ThirdActOrg
's rally and Chase bank sit-in. I am continually grateful for the generosity, tenacity, and bravery of activists.🌱❤️
MAJOR UPDATE: we turned out in force to White House Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi's keynote address.
And we shut it down.
The President committed ecocide. This cannot stand. This will not stand.
Fantastic
@ariellesamuel
interview on science & activism with
@trans_icon_mika
.
@ClimateHuman
& I get press for chaining on, but this is often the easiest role - just stand there. The hardest & least celebrated roles are mobilization, art, aid & support 🌱
This was my sixth arrest protesting peacefully for climate justice. As of today, my record is still clean. I am employed. I have housing. I am healthy. The cis, white-passing, professional privilege is real.
If you have power, use it. Our future depends on it.
4/4
We need to declare emergency, cancel global south debt, and end new leasing, for a start. As the single largest historical emitter of fossil fuels, we can help by accelerating the green transition in the US and abroad. Mobilize with us this fall
@SRTurtleIsland
@ScientistRebel1
The death toll in Pakistan continues to mount, passing 1,000 as of this morning. 33 million people have been displaced. More than 500,000 homes destroyed. Climate chaos isn't some future possibility, it is happening right now.
We (
@SRTurtleIsland
@ClimateHuman
) are hosting an informal teach-in and skill-share on Wed Dec 14 from 5-6pm CST at
#AGU22
. We want to invite people who are interested in supporting grassroots climate movements (or who are already active) to join us so we can 🧵 (1/3)
Seeing these types of graphs always hurts me, but the average person doesn't seem to know or feel it. The purpose of nonviolence and activism is to force people to know and feel that which they'd rather ignore.
DON'T LOOK UP, LOOK DOWN to Antarctica. While we all have been looking at the North Atlantic sea temperatures this week, what's happening with sea ice in Antarctica is even more dramatic and well below anything ever recorded for this date during this period of record.
In my ongoing field research on how to get in the most trouble for the most innocuous acts 😉, I was arrested yesterday with 9 elders in a
@Chase
bank in DC for ...singing?
We were held for 11 hours, and were barred from this bank for 5 years!
In his day MLK was an enemy of the state for his ‘radical��� beliefs. Now his legacy has been largely co-opted as a whitewashed icon of ‘nonviolence’ & respectability politics. Never forget what he truly stood for: collective liberation through organizing against the status quo❤️🔥
Our grief circle was peaceful - a way to share experiences and process our relationship with climate change. At first security asked us to move to a quieter location and lower our sign, and then security and AGU staff asked us to leave. After some negotiation, we were able 1/
Today
@SciRebFr
is pushing Total to
#StopEACOP
and other projects.
#BlocageTotal
Also, that's my colleague
@ElsaHAbs
behind the banner! They do super cool modeling work, & work to shape scientific culture and practices to better serve communities and marginalized groups. 🌍✊🌱
BREAKING:
Our French group
@SciRebFr
are taking action in Paris now to disrupt the annual shareholder meeting of fossil fuel giant
@TotalEnergies
.
Sadly the Police have blocked protestors from the street to allow 'business as usual' for the fossil fuel industry
#DirectAction
Announcement! Starting in September I'll be going on a meandering camping road trip around the US & in December will start a new project at LSCE in France with Philippe Ciais with funding from "Make Our Planet Great Again" (thanks
@EmmanuelMacron
) [1/2]
But I am employed/employable [and you can too]! Also if any folks out there have expertise in starting non-profits, I'm seriously thinking about the need for a research institute that is not only permissive of scientist activism but actively 2/4
New paper out! Shifts in belowground processes along a temperate forest edge
Short summary 🧵
Urban forest edges in mid-latitudes often have higher aboveground productivity because of increased sunlight and changes in microclimate.
1/7
Scientists - accepting the status quo IS a political position. i.e., being "neutral" in the face of climate and ecological emergency is a stronger, more fucked up political position than the one I'm taking.
H/t to
@RebeccaSolnit
for the conversation that fomented this rage tweet.
These PhD positions at ETH Zürich studying Arctic greening in Svalbard and northern Norway are still open! Multiple positions and angles to study from: plant <-> soil <-> microbial interactions across geoclimatic gradients. ❄️🌿🪨
"Being an ecologist in 2022 is like being a scholar in the Library of Alexandria while it burns."
"At some point you put down the books and pick up a firehose. We do this work because we love it, and we can't bear to see it destroyed.” said ecologist July
But there is a reason for that - being white makes it easier and safer to engage in higher risk activism. So I guess what I'm saying is: wealthy/healthy/white/male/cis/tenured profs - you could probably do a lot without ever being charged of a crime, or fired.
12/
In our new open access paper in
@EarthsFutureEiC
we trained statistical models on a large dataset of crop simulations to better understand crop yield response to future climate.
🧵
Today I'm headed to Atlanta to support the Black, Indigenous, youth and elders who are putting their bodies in the way of 85 acres of mature forest slated for destruction to build a massive police training facility
#StopCopCity
@defendATLforest
1/