Taking effective action on climate change through civil disobedience

Webinar #12: September 23, 2020

In this first webinar of the season we will explore community-level direct action to protect the planet by blocking climate-destroying fossil energy infrastructure construction in Canada and Oceania. Dr. Tim Takaro will discuss the ongoing citizens’ blockade of Trudeau’s TransMountain pipeline expansion project (TMX) throughout the province of British Columbia. Using climate change policy in Aotearoa NZ as a case study, Dr. Alexandra Macmillian will examine how action on climate change, a well-recognized public health emergency and an ethical crisis, can be realized by concerted citizen actions that interfere with commercial and government intention resulting in citizens including health professionals, turning to civil disobedience as a last resort. We will review the ethical and philosophical literature on medical civil disobedience and propose an ethical framework for action by health professionals.

Tim Takaro, MD MPH

Taking effective action on climate change by blocking construction of large fossil energy projects

Alexandra Macmillian, MD

Health professional civil disobedience in response to the climate health emergency: an ethical framework

Chris Buse

Moderator

Session 12 has concluded. A recording of this session can be found here.

Tim Takaro's slides can be found here.

Alexandra Macmillian's slides can be found here.