Paul Winton, the founder of the 1point5 Project and investment advisers Temple: Capital Investment Services, says he’s hearing a growing number of people talk about breaking the law to speed up the transition to carbon neutrality. 

And, Winton says, a case can be made that protesters damaging the bottom lines of companies are the economically rational actors, not the company directors failing to take account of the realities of global heating.

“If we look at aggregate economics, it's much better for society if those businesses are damaged today than to have to deal with the economic damage to society of malaria, floods, dengue fever, crop failure etc, in the future.”

He says businesses that are continuing to depend on fossil fuels or emitting large quantities of greenhouse gases need to be aware that the cost of emissions could be significantly increased by direct action.

“I think we're now at the point where the continued inaction or inadequate action of government and corporate actors will result in more civil disobedience.”

Winton says that regardless of whether companies accept the legitimacy of protests, it would be irresponsible for them not to factor in the possibility of direct action impacting their bottom lines.

Climate action "highly insufficient"

Winton founded the 1Point5 Project in 2019 after analysing what was required for New Zealand to meet its commitments under the Zero Carbon Act.

The former McKinsey & Company consultant calculated that, even with a 10% cut in agricultural emissions, New Zealand would need to almost decarbonise transport completely by 2030.

Something that doesn’t look remotely likely.

In 2019 and then in 2021, 1Point5 undertook the Six New Zealands survey (based on Yale University’s Six Americas survey) which found the majority of New Zealanders accepted climate change with 14% of them alarmed, 32% concerned and 14% cautious. 

Winton says a slight increase in those worried about climate change in 2021 was really just noise.

He suspects a similar survey done now in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle and other climate change related disasters would show a slight increase in concerned or alarmed but not by enough to drive rapid political change.

“What the American survey has shown is that although the numbers of those accepting that change is growing it’s not growing at anything like the speed necessary to ensure that the level of change required.”

That means political action alone is unlikely to result in the sort of policies needed for New Zealand to do its bit on a per capita basis.

Climate Action Tracker’s most recent rating of “highly insufficient” for New Zealand’s climate change efforts is a clear sign that the country isn’t pulling its weight, Winton says.

That’s not just bad for the planet, it’s a threat to the country’s export industries.

The recent free trade agreement with Europe requires New Zealand to be meet its United Nations Paris Agreement targets or face carbon tariffs. “So, there’s a very real risk to major export markets if we stay on the current track.”

If Parliament can't deliver results, maybe direct action will

Winton says that with parliamentary politics seemingly unable to deliver the necessary systemic changes to slash emissions, judicial activism and civil disobedience appear to the most likely options.

He says that, while individual efforts like buying a bike or giviing up meat do make a difference, only system level change can deliver the reductions in emissions required.

“Most of the transport emissions require meaningful changes in transport infrastructure by the state for them to be deliverable. We can't as individuals do much about electricity short of big, big spends.”

He says the recent Supreme Court decision to allow Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu kaumatua Mike Smith to take the country’s biggest CO2 emitters to court for their role in climate change is a good example of judicial activism.

But Winton, who attended the appeal, says it also illustrated the massive disparity in resources between those producing the emissions and those trying to reduce them.

On the corporate side you had a line-up of ten KCs - costing tens of thousands of dollars per day - on Mike Smith’s side you had a much smaller line-up of equally talented lawyers working pro bono.

He says political lobbying and court cases are raising public awareness. “But it’s probably not enough.”

History has shown that moving beyond simple protests to civil disobedience and strategic law breaking can be effective.

“An example from our own history, which a lawyer pointed out to me just the other day, is the Raglan Golf Course protests by Eva Rickard.”

Eva Rickard and Hilda Harawira Photo: Gil Hanly

The 1978 occupation of the golf course - which had been confiscated from its original owners for a war-time airport - was controversial, and condemned by the establishment at the time, but in hindsight is seen as not only legitimate but just and even heroic.

And he says there are numerous examples throughout history of people breaking the law to achieve justice.

Some of those examples - like those of abolitionist John Brown and slave rebellion leader Nat Turner - involved actions that went well beyond non-violent resistance.

And Winton says the popularity of the book How to Blow Up a Pipeline, shows there’s growing interest in more radical action.

Direct action in action across the ditch

“A really good recent example of this is the blocking of the Newcastle coal lane, in Australia, by hundreds of activists paddling on kayaks and paddle boards to block the world’s largest coal port.”

Winton says it was a highly effective protest.

“If you look at the economics of these businesses, it's all driven by throughput. It's driven by tons per day to market. That's their revenue line. They've got pretty much a fixed cost line, if you stop three days’ worth of coal shipments, roughly speaking, you've just pulled 1% out of the revenue and a lot higher percentage of the profits for that company.”

Winton says that businesses not to factoring in the possibility of direct action impacting their bottom lines are showing willful blindness.

“We’re going to have protesters who block concrete trucks as they come to site. And what that’s going to do is push timelines out. Those projects are incredibly easy to disrupt.”

Projects like the proposed Tarras airport in Central Otago or the second Mount Victoria Tunnel in Wellington are examples of potential targets.

“These projects and assets typically have single points of entry where they can easily be disrupted for some period of time.”

He cites the example of a dairy plant using coal boilers to dry milk. “It’s not hard to block a single rail line delivering the coal,” he says.

“So, when a dairy company is looking at replacing a coal boiler in, say, 2030 they should be asking themselves ‘would it be better to do it in 2025’.”

Winton says in recent years members of the establishment in Britain have been becoming much more vocal about the acceptability almost moral necessity of breaking the law to achieve reductions in emissions.

Establishment figures promoting law breaking

He points to conservationist Chris Packham’s recent Channel 4 documentary that concluded the time for direction action is now.

And environmentalist Jonathon Porritt recently suggested that those working for climate change action through legal and democratic channels should spread their bets by donating to organisations dedicated to direct action.

He told Carbon News civil disobedience is more necessary now than ever.

“It's not the only way of doing it. We need mainstream environmentalism. We need people reaching out to society and trying to persuade them to change their own behaviors, to join in political campaigning to make politicians do what they need to do. All that stuff is really important, but it's not working.

“If it was working, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. We've wasted 30 years, and we're now staring, literally staring, at the abyss of runaway climate change.”

There’s too much political naivety at the heart of today’s solutions agenda,” Porritt wrote in recent blogpost. “Do any of these genuinely caring, passionately committed, reasonable solutionists seriously think that today’s fossil fuel incumbency (embedded so deeply in both governments and the whole global business community) gives a flying fuck about what they think, say or do?”

Tarras airport commercially bonkers: Sir Jonathon Porritt

So would Sir Jonathon Porritt, 2nd Baronet, CBE, the son of a former New Zealand governor general support, for instance, disrupting the building of a new airport at Tarras in Central Otago?

"Well, it's not for me living over here in the UK to advocate for any particular way of addressing individual decisions. But the idea of a new airport there is completely wrong. It is actually bonkers from a commercial point of view. It's clearly driven by a desire to increase demand for aviation.”

Tomorrow: The protesters planning to disrupt business as usual