As members of Extinction Rebellion and other climate movements, we have been overjoyed at the success of our movement in ringing the alarm about climate and ecological breakdown, and in applying pressure to the UK government, as well as other governments worldwide. As members of the science community, we have also found comfort in a movement dedicated to telling a truth that has for decades been obscured by corporate public relations campaigns and misinformation.
Many scientists support Extinction Rebellion or are active members, lending some immediate authority to our message of climate and ecological emergency. The need for peaceful civil disobedience has been explicitly supported by over a thousand scientists. Arrested Extinction Rebellion activists received support during their trials from high-profile scientists acting as expert witnesses. As scientists ourselves, we support our movement’s goal of halting greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss rapidly and equitably, but we also know that doing so successfully requires clarity about what science can and cannot tell us. Such clarity is especially important now. In the past few years we have seen a troubling trend: a few figures in the climate movement using science — or what looks like science — to justify increasingly dire and prophetic, but ultimately unsupported, claims about the future.
