Would you spend up to five years in jail to protest
climate change, to try and get oil companies to stop, you
know, developing, to stop basically polluting
the earth with greenhouse gases and worse? Would you spend
up to five years? Well, apparently there are some people in the
UK who found out that yes, they're apparently going
to be serving four to five year sentences for protesting
in some extreme ways with the Just Stop Oil campaign in
that group. We're going to talk about that on today's episode of the How to
Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey
everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean,
how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by
taking action. Before we get into today's episode, which
is kind of an interesting one in terms of advocacy and
how far people will go and are you willing to go in the future this
far, And will people go in the future this far, knowing that the
consequences could be dire? It could take about four or five years off
of your life in terms of freedom. So we're going to talk about that in just a sec.
A couple of announcements I want to make before we start, though. I've been
doing video podcasting for the last little bit. For the last couple of weeks, I
started video podcasting. Spotify has released
a couple of new ways of podcasting that
includes adding a video. So I will add an
audio to this. So there's an audio way of listening
to the podcast, but there's also going to be a video. And so
I upload that about 8 a.m. after I upload the other ones
around midnight. I just wanted to let you guys know that
there are ways of watching me talk to
you about climate change and ocean conservation and
how to protect the ocean. I'm also putting these on YouTube, so
since I'm doing video, might as well put it on YouTube as well. But Spotify
has a really new, interesting feature and
i don't know if it's for everybody yet because they're just rolling it out but you
are allowed to comment on my podcast on the
different episodes and i think that's really great because i've been looking for a way to
engage with users right away obviously you know that you can dm me
on how to protect the ocean instagram account at how to how to protect the
ocean and i'm fully available through there but youtube
and spotify allow me to interact with you as
you comment. So if I see I get an alert that somebody
commented on an episode, I can go in, I can just be like, oh, hey,
this is great, thanks for the feedback, or love your perspective, or you
can answer some of the questions that I ask within a poll or
something like that. It's always great to be able to interact with you because right
now I'm speaking at you. you know, whether you're an audience or
a class or whoever's listening to this or however you're listening to this, I'm speaking at you. There's no
way for you to speak to me or give me feedback or answer any of the questions
that I ask within this episode. So you can
do that now through Spotify if you're on Spotify or if you want
to go over to YouTube and watch these podcasts, you can do so. I'll
be releasing them just as I release every episode three day or every podcast
three days a week, Monday, Wednesday to Friday. You'll be able to have access to
that. The second announcement I wanna make, if you love news and you want it, not only through
podcasts and through video, I also have a newsletter that I release Monday
to Friday in your inbox at 8 a.m. every morning, or
every morning on the weekday. So if you wanna access to that, we have news items,
latest news, we have the latest podcasts, like a little summary and ability to access
all the latest podcasts, you know, through Beyond Jaws, you
know, a couple of other ones, Aquadocs and so forth, and of course,
How to Protect the Ocean. And of course, I have about three different articles
that I post each and every newsletter, and as well as three different job
posts that I see that I find interesting that you may find interesting as well.
So all you have to do is go to speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter.
That's speakupforblue.com forward slash
newsletter. It's free. I don't do anything with your email other than send you information on
the ocean, which is my goal. My goal is to just keep you informed of what's happening on the
ocean, including this episode here, which I find a
little scary. You know, we see that when
we talk about marine conservation and we want marine conservation to happen.
It doesn't always happen on a government level. We've seen climate change. That's
a big issue. Plastic pollution, huge issue. Overfishing,
huge issue. We need legislation. There has been legislation put
forward or done in the past. We need to make sure that it's better and it
always gets better. But a lot of times, we need to create new legislation. And
we want our governments to create new legislation. That
doesn't always happen the way we want it for whatever reason. And
sometimes you have to put more pressure. So you can team up with a non-profit
organization and you can say, hey, I want to help you and
volunteer in a campaign to make sure that this government listens.
So that might be going for a protest, like a non-violent protest. That
might be putting out stuff on social media, like
some of their material, all that kind of stuff. When we talk about
protesting, protesting is to say, hey, government, we're not happy. Hey,
politicians, we're not happy with what you're doing. We would like you to do this, but you're not listening
to us. We've sent petitions. We've tried to contact you individually. Now
we're coming together as a community in a large group and coming and
we're yelling it at you. Please do something about whatever.
In this case, it's oil companies. Let's stop producing
oil. Just Stop Oil is the organization that has been
kind of leading the charge in what I would call
and what I would consider extreme sort of attention seeking.
right? Not necessarily a good way or a bad way. Some of them are a little dangerous
and I'm concerned about the people. Some of them are just getting
people's attention. And a lot of people hate the fact that, you
know, they're getting people's attention. However, You know,
this is where they're at. This is where this organization, the people who volunteer for this
organization feel that this is what they need to do in order
to gain the attention of the government to
change things. And so Just Stop Oil, their mission is
to continue these protests until the government changes
its stance on exploration in the North Sea of oil for
companies. So that's basically opening up leases or providing
subsidies, more subsidies to oil companies. and allowing these
companies to drill within the North Sea, which is going to affect climate change
furthermore with the release of greenhouse gases through
the fossil fuel creation process. So they want to
just stop oil. That's their organization. It's pretty simple. They go on these protests. You've
probably seen them in videos throwing paint on what seems to
be artwork. art where
they've been slowing down the UK. They walk really slow in the
streets and people have to move slow. They don't like the fact that they're moving
slow because they're trying to get to their job and of course they're rushing
everywhere to go and I completely understand people have to work, people have to make money
and they're late all the time. That could be a problem but the whole point is to gain attention
from the government and be like these people are disrupting traffic constantly even
though they're getting arrested while doing it, they're still disrupting it.
Let's get their attention. That's what they want to do. They've also
been in like F1 races where they've gone on the track, which I think is extremely dangerous,
and that's very dangerous. Recently, there
was, and they get prosecuted. A lot of times they'll be put in jail for a night or
a day or a weekend, and then they're let go. Some have
court cases later on, some get off, some don't. There have been a number
of them who have been prosecuted fully to the extent of the law, and
have actually served time, or are serving time, or are
about to serve time. And the latest in The Guardian shows that five
Just Stop Oil activists receive record sentences for
planning to block the M25, which is a highway there, that's my understanding. a
major highway into the UK or into London. So Roger
Hellam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker-Debreu
and Christina Gethin were found guilty last week of
conspiracy to cause a public nuisance for coordinating
direct action protests on the M25 over
four days in November 2022. So
one person, Hallam, received a five-year sentence on Thursday, while
the other four received each sentence of four years.
Each of them received a four-year sentence. So this is
thought to be the longest sentences ever given in the UK for
nonviolent protests, exceeding those given to the Gistop oil protesters,
Morgan Trollin, who got three years, and Marcus Decker, who got two years
and seven months, for scaling the Dartford Crossing. I'm
assuming that's a bridge. I'm not too sure exactly what that is. However, it
disrupted, and you do public disruption. Now, there are laws set
for public disruption, and there are extents of those, like
there are maximum fines and maximum penalties for that, jail
time and so forth. And a lot of times you'll hear that when people are charged with
certain things, they can spend up to five years in jail or pay a
$30,000 fine or $180,000 fine. You see these happen all the time.
A lot of the times, they don't get that sentence. They
don't get the maximum sentence unless they did something that's egregiously bad
or like really, really to the fullest extent of that law.
However, apparently they're getting some. And I don't know if
this is just the fact that the justice system is sick of
prosecuting the protesters and are trying to
stop them from doing it, to stop others from doing it. And that's the question
that I asked right off the bat. Are you willing to spend up to five years in
jail to be able to protest oil exploration? Are
you willing to do that? Because that's what seems to be the price to pay
depending on what you're doing in, you
know, what you're protesting and how you protest. Some of these extreme events,
these extreme protests cause, you know, people harm
or could cause people harm. Like imagine being able to sit on a tarmac, a
F1 tarmac, which has got to be hot. But while the race is going on,
these F1 cars are coming so, so fast. Even
though they're trying to get out of the way, and they're trying to stay out of the way, and they're trying to be safe, you
never know what might happen. And you can put the driver
in danger. You can put yourself in danger. There's a lot of other things that you can do that
could cause danger. So I think this is what they're trying to dispel. They're trying to
make sure that nobody gets hurt in these things. But I think they're also trying
to suppress a lot of the protests that are happening. Now, until recently, the
government was very conservative. And that government had the
power for the last 14 years, until recently, when the labor government
took over. Now, in the sentencing, some of
the protesters that were about to be sentenced said,
hey, look, we don't feel that we might have to do these protests that
much anymore, because there's a new government in town, and they
are a little bit more to do something about climate change.
That's what they said in their protest, or in their, not
protest, but in their election promises. So, you
know, maybe they're not going to do it, there's not an app to recur and
come back and do the same thing and have to go through the same process and
cause the court a lot of money to, justice and a lot of money
to go to court and do all the filing and stuff like that. That
didn't work. That didn't work. It seems like this judge is like, look,
I understand what you feel the need to do. You're at this point
where you have to do something more extreme to get people to
get the government's attention. However, this
is not the way to do it. This is very dangerous. It's dangerous for people. It's dangerous for you. And
we need to keep everything safe. So unfortunately, if you even
though you feel the need to do this, you have to be you have to be punished.
And so they were given five and four year sentences. So one person received five,
four people received four year sentences. That's a lot of time. A
lot of the people who are in this, some of them, I'm looking at pictures of them, some of them look really young,
some of them look sort of middle-aged, that could take a lot of time in
developing your career and doing something maybe a little bit more positive
in terms of getting results. We don't
know if these will, you know, you know,
come into results. We don't know if this directly affected the election. I
highly doubt it. But this is what
the people who are doing these types of protests feel. They feel like they
can have an effect if they get the attention of the government. To get the attention of
the government, they have to do something big to get in the news so that
they get the attention of the government. Unfortunately, when you do that, you
do pay the price. And it's something, as scientists and conservationists, that we need to
really evaluate on whether you're willing to make that sacrifice. They're
nonviolent, hopefully. And you
still have to pay the consequences, because there are consequences. There are laws to disrupting major
highways, or a bridge, or something like that. There are laws
in place to stop that from happening. And you have to be ready
to serve that consequence. In this
case, it's four to five years. That's a long time away
from maybe your families, away from your jobs, away from just
freedom. That's a tough thing, a tough road to go
by. I feel for the people who have to do this sentence, I'm sure that's not
what they first expected, and it's
probably going to be devastating towards them, but it's one of the things
that we have to consider when we start to advocate for
something in these types of manners, where you're trying to get the attention,
you got their attention, but with that attention comes attention on you and
comes the law. And I'm not saying that it's right. Do
I think they deserve four to five years? No, I don't think they deserve four to
five years in my personal opinion However, I'm sure
a lot of the people who were blocked on the m25 and on those on
those bridges that couldn't get to work or things I feel a different way
and that's unfortunate. That's the way that's the way it goes is it's
a sacrifice that you have to be willing to take and you have to be willing to
make and Be willing to suffer the consequences for that Um,
it sucks. I never want to see anybody happen, uh,
you know, that happen to anybody, um, nor do I want
to see anything violent happen because of, of protest. And
unfortunately, in certain situations that's happened, whether it be environmental or
non-environmental, um, but they were able to speak their voices, and
unfortunately, it just, the way they went about it, it just didn't jive
with, with the law, and that sucks. Um, you know, and I,
I really do feel for them. I really do. That's a very different
change in their life and I'm sure they didn't expect that they were going to have to
do that. And unfortunately, they feel that they need to do that.
And that's where a lot of people who kind
of just throw up their hands and be like, I give up. There's nothing that we can do. I've talked
to people that way. There's nothing that we can do. We are going to damage the planet. We
are going to go through climate change and we're just going to have to suffer the consequences. generations
from now or even now. And people are going to lose their livelihoods, people are
going to lose their homes, people are going to lose lives from
it. But unfortunately, nobody's ever going to do it. We're controlled by
something different. Greed has controlled the
government for a long time, and money has controlled the government for a long time, and fossil fuel
companies have that money. And we've seen they're willing to do whatever it
takes to ensure that that happens, including global campaigns to
deny climate change. and global campaigns to say, hey, you know what? It's
already happening. You can just give up. There's no point. They've actually come
out and said that. That's one of their tactics, just to say, just give up. It's
OK. Don't worry about it. We'll still be OK. It's not going
to affect you directly. It'll affect you indirectly, and then maybe later
on, generations down the road. But it's OK. We're making our money, and you get
to be happy. And don't worry about it. And that's really what it's come down to.
There's some people feel that they have to make more extreme decisions
and try and get attention in more extreme ways. And
that's not going to stop, unfortunately. I don't think a four to five year sentence for
some people are going to think that that's the price
that they're willing to pay. And I don't know if these protesters are,
but you know, they did, and
they're going to. And so other people, I don't think this Just Stop Oil
group are going to stop. They have a mission, and people, like, you
know, other people were, last year were sentenced to two to three years,
and they're fine, and, you know, the
others are still protesting. So, I think this is a movement, this
is a movement that's going to be tough to stop. Unfortunately, you know, I think a
lot of people give I don't want to give any protesters or anybody talking about climate
change a bad name because of Just Stop Oil. There's definitely ramifications to
the movement on that. But for the most part, a lot of people are just, you
know, like you and me, who are just like, look, we have to do something about climate change. There's
a lot of work that we need to do. The first thing is putting the right people in
politics and getting the right people to run in politics and to be
able to do the right thing. And it doesn't necessarily mean you have to run for office, but
you can get involved within your local city, you can get involved within
your local county, your local province, whatever that might be.
And that could be with a nonprofit organization, that could be volunteering on
committees for government. There's all those, there's all different types of ways that
you can take part. So I highly recommend that you do that and
look into it before you go to these extreme ways. Hopefully you
don't feel the need to do that anytime soon. But that's it for today's episode. I'd
love to hear what you think. You can leave a comment on Spotify or on
YouTube. You can also hit me up on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean. I
want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
HowToProtectTheOcean podcast. I'm your host, Angelo, and have a great day. We'll talk to you next time,