On a May morning in Kaurna/Adelaide, Annie Bond and a colleague put on their lab coats.
Annie — Dr Bond — is a scientist, and in a way, she was about to conduct an experiment. But she wasn’t in a lab.
“We were wearing lab coats to identify ourselves as scientists — [lab coats are] an easily recognisable symbol of a scientist, even though not all scientists wear lab coats,” she says.
“I put some superglue on my palm, and pressed my palm against the glass window.”
Dr Bond has a PhD in applied ecology and economics. In her day job, she monitors and evaluates natural resources with the Northern and Yorke Landscape Board in South Australia.
But she wasn’t representing her employer on this day, as she glued her hand to the glass window of the Santos building in downtown Adelaide.
Other activists had superglued their hands to the street outside, blocking traffic.
“We targeted Santos because they make a huge contribution to climate change and global warming.
“They also have proposed fossil fuel expansion in the Barossa [offshore] gas fields and the Narrabri region, which are being challenged by First Nations traditional owners.”
Dr Bond says she was a bit anxious, but not as anxious as she might have been in New South Wales, where recent law changes mean blocking streets or other “illegal” protests carry a jail sentence of up to two years.
Police used acetone to free her hand from the Santos facade and she was arrested and charged with property damage, but the magistrate didn’t record a conviction.
In that sense, Dr Bond’s experiment was a success. And it probably won’t be her last.
Dr Bond is part of a growing movement of scientists taking direct action to demand governments step up to the climate challenge.
Around 1,000 scientists from more than 25 countries, including Dr Bond, took part in protests in April and May this year, under the Scientist Rebellion banner.
Scientist Rebellion are calling on more colleagues to join their fight, and there’s a good chance they’ll get their wish.
‘No greater betrayal of humanity’
Back in 1988, NASA’s James Hansen testified before a US senate committee that burning fossil fuels was causing climate change, and that “… the greenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to affect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves.”
About two years later, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its first report, warning that the evidence for human-caused climate change was unequivocal.
Outwardly at least, it seemed the message was getting across and that we’d soon start to see the wheels of change turning.
But in the 32 years since that IPCC report, we have put as many emissions into the atmosphere as in all of industrialised human history before it.
Or if you want to put it another way, half of global emissions have come when the world knew what was happening to the planet.
Speaking to scientists who have chosen to take the leap into activism today, there’s a common theme. The science has been settled for 30-odd years, but climate scientists aren’t being listened to.
Peter Kalmus is a former astrophysicist, now climate scientist, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California.
Like most scientist activists, Dr Kalmus is quick to point out that he’s speaking on his own behalf, not his employer’s.
You might recognise him from a viral video earlier this year, where he chained himself to a building occupied by JP Morgan Chase — the world’s largest financier of fossil fuel infrastructure projects — and delivered an emotional plea for climate action.
Dr Kalmus says it’s more than a case of scientists not being listened to — there’s been an aggressive campaign by the fossil fuel industry over the past 30 years to spread misinformation about climate change.
“I feel that there has been no greater betrayal of humanity than by fossil fuel executives,” he says.
“They’ve known they’re taking us to the brink of irreversible catastrophe — all the wildfires, the floods, the rising seas, the lowering crop yields, and crop failures, they knew all of this 30 years ago.
“And they made a conscious decision to obfuscate, to sow doubt, to stop action, to buy politicians.
“They colluded with each other. They hired some of the best PR people in the world to make this happen. And they were very successful.”
Before he blockaded the JP Morgan Chase building on April 6 — his first real frontline protest — Dr Kalmus says he and the scientists who stood beside him had reached a point that was “beyond frustrated”.
“I was feeling desperate for the sake of the planet that I love, and for my kids and for myself.
“About a month before April 6th, I’m like, ‘I’m all in, we gotta do this, let’s plan this out.’
“That was kind of the moment that really changed me, when I stopped flirting with the idea and just decided I’m going to go for it.”
Media, critics, missing the point of disruption
David Schlosberg, a professor of environmental politics and director of the Sydney Environment Institute, is not surprised we’re starting to see climate scientists hitting the frontlines.
According to Professor Schlosberg, many scientists have become disillusioned with the legitimacy of the political process, and there’s been a reckoning over the past 30 years — there’s “not a clear pathway” from science to policy.
“For climate scientists in particular, there’s been a realisation that they not only have to do the science, but they have to do the politics as well,” he says.
Where science and political engagement still aren’t getting through, he says “activism is the next step”.
Extinction Rebellion, and now Scientist Rebellion, use a tactic of disruption — blocking roads, traffic, buildings, ports, and commerce.
It’s often portrayed in the media as an unnecessary nuisance, but Professor Schlosberg says the critics are usually missing the point.
The disruption is meant to provide a small taste of the impacts of climate change, he says.
“You might have protesters blocking a road with their body one day, but a week later you’ve got roads being blocked by flood water.”
A beefing up of anti-protest laws in New South Wales earlier this year, after a string of road, port and rail blockades, suggests the tactics are hitting a sore spot, says Professor Schlosberg.
“[The government’s] anti-democratic response to protest illustrates that the protest is effective.
“You not only have governments not taking climate action, you’ve got governments trying to stop effective protests from happening — [protests] that bring attention to that lack of action.”
Having scientists on the frontline is not necessarily new.
The nuclear disarmament movement, for instance, saw scientists, critically aware of what a “nuclear winter” would entail, taking to the picket lines.
There’s a similar desperation among scientists now, and in the current environment, Professor Schlosberg says he thinks the Scientist Rebellion movement has the potential to get bigger.
“It would not surprise me if there was more of it,” he says.
“Having scientists on the frontlines alongside protesters brings a heft.”
‘The shackles have come off’
Karin Xuereb is one scientist who plans to continue putting her body on the line.
Though now retired, Ms Xuereb spent a lot of her career studying rainfall data as a senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM).
When the news says something like “it hasn’t rained this much since 1975” — that’s a stat Dr Xuereb helped figure out.
But when it came to climate change, as a government employee, she didn’t feel she could speak out.
“You sort of fit into this mould and you just become very obedient and do what’s expected.”
Back in 2014, a News Corp broadsheet published a series of articles accusing the BOM of fudging its data, to say that climate change was worse than it was.
Then-prime minister Tony Abbott — who has called climate science “crap” — ran with the claims and even considered launching an inquiry.
What News Corp had jumped on was the BOM’s use of data homogenisation — a necessary method to get rid of non-climate-related weather station influences, such as a relocated station, a new building throwing shade over instruments, or other abnormalities.
Climate experts at the time found that the BOM’s method had actually reduced the overall recorded severity of warming. And a later review found the BOM’s data was accurate and reliable.
But the damage had been done.
“That used to upset me and a lot of my colleagues as well. We knew how we created that dataset, and hearing all those attacks on the Bureau, even in parliament, it was very frustrating.”
When she retired from the BOM five years ago, Dr Xuereb planned to spend time in her garden in Naarm/Melbourne, but it didn’t take long for those plans to fall by the wayside.
“I wouldn’t have thought I’d be doing this. I wouldn’t have considered, you know, being an activist.”
In 2019, a wave of Extinction Rebellion protests that had started in London, were getting coverage in the mainstream media.
“I thought, these are ordinary people that are so concerned about this, and I know what the science is. I should be doing it just to … really stand up for the science.”
Since first joining Extinction Rebellion, and then Scientist Rebellion, she’s blockaded ExxonMobil in Yarraville, been on marches, made banners, helped organise events, and even picked up fellow activists from police cells.
She says she hopes that having scientists marching in the streets might help to lend weight to calls for policymakers to take the climate crisis seriously.
“You can’t write us off as being a bunch of hippies.
“If we’re walking around in lab coats and you see a bunch of nerds walking down the street, maybe you think that this really is something we should take seriously.”
She says what she does concerns her family, but like doctors Bond and Kalmus, now that she’s taken the leap onto the frontlines, she can’t go back.
“The shackles have come off.”