How climate protesters perceive injustice and justify breaking the law: Qualitative interviews with Extinction Rebellion

Abstract

Facing the looming threat of the climate crisis, climate movements using strategies of nonviolent civil disobedience have recently attracted attention. To better understand what drives such groups to protest possibly in law-violating ways, we conducted qualitative interviews among 106 people involved with Extinction Rebellion in the Netherlands. These interviews had two main goals: (1) to explore the relevance of perceived injustice as a motivation for protesters to participate in climate action and (2) to determine protesters’ justifications for breaking the law with civil disobedient protest. Our findings show that perceived injustice was an important motivation for the protesters we interviewed. Specifically, they perceived injustice in their personal futures, government actions (or lack thereof), the unequal distribution of climate change impacts and responsibility, police treatment, and societal systems. Furthermore, protesters indicated a willingness to break certain laws with civil disobedient protests in a nonviolent manner, but their definitions of nonviolence varied. In particular, protesters legitimized disruptive actions by citing the current urgency of addressing what is at stake, future moral goals, and the past effectiveness of disobedient strategies. These findings help to understand how climate protesters’ injustice perceptions and their intentions to participate in disruptive actions are shaped in today’s society.