Environmental Activism and the Fairness of Costs Argument for Uncivil Disobedience

Social movements often impose nontrivial costs on others against their wills. Civil disobedience is no exception. How can social movements in general, and civil disobedience in particular, be justifiable despite this apparent wrong-making feature? We examine an intuitively plausible account—it is fa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the American Philosophical Association 2023-09, Vol.9 (3), p.490-509
Main Authors: LAI, TEN-HERNG, LIM, CHONG-MING
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activists
Civil disobedience
Climate change
Coal
Demonstrations & protests
Environmental policy
Environmentalism
Injustice
Nonviolence
Political activism
Social activism
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Summary:Social movements often impose nontrivial costs on others against their wills. Civil disobedience is no exception. How can social movements in general, and civil disobedience in particular, be justifiable despite this apparent wrong-making feature? We examine an intuitively plausible account—it is fair that everyone should bear the burdens of tackling injustice. We extend this fairness-based argument for civil disobedience to defend some acts of uncivil disobedience. Focusing on uncivil environmental activism—such as ecotage (sabotage with the aim of protecting the environment)—we argue that some acts of uncivil disobedience can be morally superior to their civil counterparts, when and because such acts target people who are responsible for environmental threats. Indeed, insofar as some acts of uncivil disobedience can more accurately target responsible people, they can better satisfy the demands of fairness compared to their civil counterparts. In some circumstances, our argument may require activists to engage in uncivil disobedience even when civil disobedience is available.
ISSN:2053-4477
2053-4485
DOI:10.1017/apa.2022.15