Mind you, Greenpeace have the dosh to get NASA climate boffin Jim Hansen over to testify for the defence.

Still, it bodes well for the Drax coal train protesters when their case comes before a jury.

Dr Simon lewis is a climatologist and Royal Society Research Fellow, and he was an expert witenss at the trial. In an article in the Guardian he reports

judge Morris Cooper presented a 20-page judgment accepting there was an “urgent need for drastic action”, but convicted them of aggravated trespass, saying their defence, that their crime was necessary to save lives, could not be substantiated.

Lewis goes on to point out that this is because there is no figure for the deaths. The sole reliable number (the World Health Organisation one I linked to above) is old and its methods limited.

It may be difficult to exactly attribute death to climate change, but – as Lewis points out – no more so than getting a number for passive smoking.

True, but being liked by the jury would be handy.

the ‘directness’ of the threats that I’d be removing. Whaling boats kill whales – kill the boat, save the whale. Cars kill, but slowly, as an accumulated effect. Though now the threat of climate change is urgent and real, it doesn’t ‘feel’ as urgent (no dead bodies on the TV

That’s because the people who are dying aren’t very white or very rich, so the TV isn’t interested.

Increased sea temperatures have moved Eastern African rainfall, drying out lands in Ethiopia and starving people. Rising sea levels have ruined lands in Bangladesh, again destroying peoples’ ability to feed themselves.

But this is Ethiopia and Bangladesh. Whilst they are practically bywords for global poverty, our attitude is one of poverty being some unfortunate act of god rather than a preventable and political action. More, the people it happens to are less important and less human than us.

Though I hesitate to the point of cryogenic freezing before commending him as an activist, there’s no way of saying it better than Bono at the 2004 Labour Party conference;

there’s no way we can look at Africa – a continent bursting into flames – and if we’re honest conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else. Anywhere else. Certainly not here, in Europe. Or America. Or Australia, or Canada. There’s just no chance. You see, deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out.

The bodies are piling up. The UN conservatively estimates that, already, 150,000 people a year are dying from climate change. That’s a 9/11 every fortnight. Imagine how much we’d see of it, complete with heart-rending human interest stories, if that were happening in America.

Second, convenience. I know perfectly well that if someone blows up a whaling boat, it won’t affect me negatively – I’ll only see positives. If people start blowing up cars or commercial aircraft, people will be inconvenienced directly. Whilst the public are aware of the need to tackle climate change, most people don’t want themselves to be the ones that have to change.

And this is the problem. The science is clear; we need drastic cuts in emissions pronto – at least a 60% global cut by 2030, which for us over-emitters means a 90-95% cut. There’s no way we can do that with a bit of lightbulb changing. even if we reduce all other emissions to zero, it’s no good if we leave aviation going. The UK government claims to want a 60% cut by 2050 (itself not enough, but let’s play). Under that same government’s plans for airport expansion, aviation would account for around 200% of the entire country’s emissions target before anyone does anything else like flick a light switch or turn their car ignition.

Aviation is a case like no other. It’s only a newcomer to our lives, most of the world has never done it and never will, and there is no alternative technology to make it low-carbon. It simply has to go.

destroy a commercial aircraft, and I doubt the holidaymakers whose flights have been cancelled will be queuing up to shake hands

But those destroying the aircraft aren’t seeking to be liked by the passengers any more than the French Resistance blowing up railway lines were seeking to be liked by Nazis.

Well, examining the motives behind my initial ‘gut’ reaction, two reasons spring to mind.

First probably the ‘directness’ of the threats that I’d be removing. Whaling boats kill whales – kill the boat, save the whale. Cars kill, but slowly, as an accumulated effect. Though now the threat of climate change is urgent and real, it doesn’t ‘feel’ as urgent (no dead bodies on the TV, caused by car-fumes).

Second, convenience. I know perfectly well that if someone blows up a whaling boat, it won’t affect me negatively – I’ll only see positives. If people start blowing up cars or commercial aircraft, people will be inconvenienced directly. Whilst the public are aware of the need to tackle climate change, most people don’t want themselves to be the ones that have to change. Campaign outside a power station, and I’m sure even a few employees will be quietly pleased – destroy a commercial aircraft, and I doubt the holidaymakers whose flights have been cancelled will be queuing up to shake hands

A more positive way of making my original point would be that if an action can’t be prosecuted, then effectively it’s legal. The question for anyone considering this type of terrorism* would be how far the climate of opinion has already moved their way, and whether the action itself would move it further.

*the use or threat of action [which] involves serious damage to property, where the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause (Terrorism Act 2000)

Nonetheless, there have been those spoof parking tickets dished out on cars in the UK since the mid-90s, with a newer (very realistic) version done for 4X4s.

4x4s and SUVs have already been a target. Six years ago in the USA, Jeff Luers was convicted of firebombing an SUV dealership for climate change reasons. He was sentenced to 23 years.

The science is very clear. If we wait for runaway climate change to happen before we act, it will be too late. We need radical changes in our way of life if we are to avoid runaway climate change, and pronto. Thing is, it’s all possible, with technology that already exists, for us to keep well fed and warm and dry and get around. The one exception, the only high-emitting industry with no low-carbon alternative, is aviation. As such, it is rightly singled out.

I realise, as you’ve said Jim and as Phil’s emphasised, that we’re focusing here on the legal status.

Huge carbon emissions, despite effectively being a conspiracy to commit mass murder, aren’t covered by the Genocide Act. Anti-nuclear protesters looked into that law and it has to be the killing of a specific group of people. If the killing is indiscriminate – even if it’s far greater – it’s not genocide under English law.

However, the defence of necessity is curious. The defence must show that they sincerely believed they were preventing a greater crime. The accuracy of their sincere belief is irrelevant.

In practice, faced with damage to government or corporate property, most courts ignore this. But stick a case like that in front of a jury and funny things can happen. There’s not only the Hawk jet case, more recently there was the B52 Two.

In March 2003 two people went into RAF Fairford where American bombers were leaving to bomb Baghdad prior to the invasion of Iraq. The men intended to disable planes or their support equipment. In their trial, it was ruled that a Crime of Aggression was not a crime under domestic law. They still argued that they were acting to prevent damage to life and property in Iraq. In October 2006, the jury failed to reach a verdict.

At the retrial in May this year, it took less than three hours for the jury to declare a unanimous Not Guilty verdict. Going to trash those planes was legal.

The key thing seems to be getting a jury. Of course, it’s easier for a jury to be morally outraged by the Indonesian war in East Timor or the – by then – near-universal dislike of the occupation of Iraq. It may be different when it’s flights from UK airports, something that most members of the jury will use and enjoy.

But just as the Jim’s first hypothetical plane-trashing might inspire others, so it might help to move the debate about climate change; it could normalise this type of action.

One of the striking things about the Camp For Climate Action (last year at Drax coal-fired power station, this year at Heathrow) was the low level of hostility to the protesters. Campers were fully expecting ‘you want to turn the lights out’ and ‘you want to take holidays away from ordinary people’ stuff, yet were often met with a very different reaction.

Public understanding of climate change, its scale and urgency, are good enough that radical solutions such as those proposed by the Camp For Climate Action are given a serious hearing. The Camp’s media team were taken aback by the journalists having the attitude of ‘about time somebody suggested something that squares up to the problem’. So maybe a jury, faced with expert witnesses putting the detail of climate change to them over several days, would acquit plane-trashers.

In April, protesters occupied Ratcliffe on Soar coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire. Their case has yet to come to trial, but at the pre-trial review it was ruled that they will be allowed to argue a defence of necessity based on the climate damage the plant causes. As far as I know, they’re having a magistrate trial rather than a jury, though.

Not quite what I was getting at. I’m using ‘social’ to mean no more than ‘having to do with how people live together’. In that sense, dealing with climate change has to be a major element of any project for social justice on a world scale.

My problem was with formulations such as “legally legitimate as well as ethically” or “ethically and legally acceptable”. I don’t think you can get to ‘legal’ through an appeal to justice. What’s just may be decidable by philosophers – it may even be possible to reach a high level of agreement as to what it is – but what’s legal (in a particular society, at a particular time) can only be decided through politics.

I’m certain that there’ll be a moment when enough people become convinced of the reality of Climate Change that dramatic action against perceived “Carbon Criminals” will be taken. That said, I’m also certain that this won’t occur until it’s too late to make any practical difference (as I believe it may already be).

It’s a while since I’ve studied Kant. Mind you, I’m reading a lot of Jung at the moment, and he’s vaguely like reading the Critique of Pure Reason if it had been written on the evenings Immanuel smoked opium and took mushrooms. Actually, that’s not quite true; quite aside from the content, and despite the occasional woolly-headedness and gratuitous weirdness, Jung is a far better writer than Kant. In fact, I doubt psychoanalysis would’ve had anything like impact it did have, if Freud and Jung hadn’t been such exceptional writers.

But as a Kantian, would you not agree that an issue like Climate Change (i.e. something that is global and — by definition — transcends any single “society”) is beyond “social justice”? In fact, if we’re going to dance with Kant, then what about an appeal to “human dignity” which is arguably far more relevant in this case. The deprivations that will be suffered by those left homeless and stranded by the effects of Climate Change are surely a grievous affront to human dignity.

In practice, those who will suffer most are not from societies where the emissions are taking place (I think Bangladesh and Mozambique will be the first two nations to be seriously affected by sea-level rises, in terms of sheer numbers of people involved). This makes a call to ‘social justice’ problematic to say the least.

Indeed, it seems like a situation where western public sympathy (against the sabotage of cars or planes) is pitting social justice directly against human dignity.