Just Stop Oil: Nonviolent Protests Get Record Sentences

Would you spend up to five years in jail to protest climate change, to try and get oil companies to stop, you know, developing, to stop basically polluting the earth with greenhouse gases and worse? Would you spend up to five years? Well, apparently there are some people in the UK who found out that yes, they're apparently going to be serving four to five year sentences for protesting in some extreme ways with the Just Stop Oil campaign in

that group. We're going to talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by

taking action. Before we get into today's episode, which is kind of an interesting one in terms of advocacy and how far people will go and are you willing to go in the future this far, And will people go in the future this far, knowing that the consequences could be dire? It could take about four or five years off of your life in terms of freedom. So we're going to talk about that in just a sec. A couple of announcements I want to make before we start, though. I've been

doing video podcasting for the last little bit. For the last couple of weeks, I started video podcasting. Spotify has released a couple of new ways of podcasting that includes adding a video. So I will add an audio to this. So there's an audio way of listening to the podcast, but there's also going to be a video. And so I upload that about 8 a.m. after I upload the other ones

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the ocean, which is my goal. My goal is to just keep you informed of what's happening on the ocean, including this episode here, which I find a little scary. You know, we see that when we talk about marine conservation and we want marine conservation to happen. It doesn't always happen on a government level. We've seen climate change. That's a big issue. Plastic pollution, huge issue. Overfishing, huge issue. We need legislation. There has been legislation put

forward or done in the past. We need to make sure that it's better and it always gets better. But a lot of times, we need to create new legislation. And we want our governments to create new legislation. That doesn't always happen the way we want it for whatever reason. And sometimes you have to put more pressure. So you can team up with a non-profit organization and you can say, hey, I want to help you and volunteer in a campaign to make sure that this government listens.

So that might be going for a protest, like a non-violent protest. That might be putting out stuff on social media, like some of their material, all that kind of stuff. When we talk about protesting, protesting is to say, hey, government, we're not happy. Hey, politicians, we're not happy with what you're doing. We would like you to do this, but you're not listening

to us. We've sent petitions. We've tried to contact you individually. Now we're coming together as a community in a large group and coming and we're yelling it at you. Please do something about whatever. In this case, it's oil companies. Let's stop producing oil. Just Stop Oil is the organization that has been kind of leading the charge in what I would call and what I would consider extreme sort of attention seeking.

right? Not necessarily a good way or a bad way. Some of them are a little dangerous and I'm concerned about the people. Some of them are just getting people's attention. And a lot of people hate the fact that, you know, they're getting people's attention. However, You know, this is where they're at. This is where this organization, the people who volunteer for this organization feel that this is what they need to do in order to gain the attention of the government to

change things. And so Just Stop Oil, their mission is to continue these protests until the government changes its stance on exploration in the North Sea of oil for companies. So that's basically opening up leases or providing subsidies, more subsidies to oil companies. and allowing these companies to drill within the North Sea, which is going to affect climate change furthermore with the release of greenhouse gases through the fossil fuel creation process. So they want to

just stop oil. That's their organization. It's pretty simple. They go on these protests. You've probably seen them in videos throwing paint on what seems to be artwork. art where they've been slowing down the UK. They walk really slow in the streets and people have to move slow. They don't like the fact that they're moving slow because they're trying to get to their job and of course they're rushing everywhere to go and I completely understand people have to work, people have to make money

and they're late all the time. That could be a problem but the whole point is to gain attention from the government and be like these people are disrupting traffic constantly even though they're getting arrested while doing it, they're still disrupting it. Let's get their attention. That's what they want to do. They've also been in like F1 races where they've gone on the track, which I think is extremely dangerous, and that's very dangerous. Recently, there

was, and they get prosecuted. A lot of times they'll be put in jail for a night or a day or a weekend, and then they're let go. Some have court cases later on, some get off, some don't. There have been a number of them who have been prosecuted fully to the extent of the law, and have actually served time, or are serving time, or are about to serve time. And the latest in The Guardian shows that five Just Stop Oil activists receive record sentences for

planning to block the M25, which is a highway there, that's my understanding. a major highway into the UK or into London. So Roger Hellam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker-Debreu and Christina Gethin were found guilty last week of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance for coordinating direct action protests on the M25 over four days in November 2022. So one person, Hallam, received a five-year sentence on Thursday, while the other four received each sentence of four years.

Each of them received a four-year sentence. So this is thought to be the longest sentences ever given in the UK for nonviolent protests, exceeding those given to the Gistop oil protesters, Morgan Trollin, who got three years, and Marcus Decker, who got two years and seven months, for scaling the Dartford Crossing. I'm assuming that's a bridge. I'm not too sure exactly what that is. However, it

disrupted, and you do public disruption. Now, there are laws set for public disruption, and there are extents of those, like there are maximum fines and maximum penalties for that, jail time and so forth. And a lot of times you'll hear that when people are charged with certain things, they can spend up to five years in jail or pay a $30,000 fine or $180,000 fine. You see these happen all the time.

A lot of the times, they don't get that sentence. They don't get the maximum sentence unless they did something that's egregiously bad or like really, really to the fullest extent of that law. However, apparently they're getting some. And I don't know if this is just the fact that the justice system is sick of prosecuting the protesters and are trying to stop them from doing it, to stop others from doing it. And that's the question

that I asked right off the bat. Are you willing to spend up to five years in jail to be able to protest oil exploration? Are you willing to do that? Because that's what seems to be the price to pay depending on what you're doing in, you know, what you're protesting and how you protest. Some of these extreme events, these extreme protests cause, you know, people harm or could cause people harm. Like imagine being able to sit on a tarmac, a

F1 tarmac, which has got to be hot. But while the race is going on, these F1 cars are coming so, so fast. Even though they're trying to get out of the way, and they're trying to stay out of the way, and they're trying to be safe, you never know what might happen. And you can put the driver in danger. You can put yourself in danger. There's a lot of other things that you can do that could cause danger. So I think this is what they're trying to dispel. They're trying to

make sure that nobody gets hurt in these things. But I think they're also trying to suppress a lot of the protests that are happening. Now, until recently, the government was very conservative. And that government had the power for the last 14 years, until recently, when the labor government

took over. Now, in the sentencing, some of the protesters that were about to be sentenced said, hey, look, we don't feel that we might have to do these protests that much anymore, because there's a new government in town, and they are a little bit more to do something about climate change. That's what they said in their protest, or in their, not

protest, but in their election promises. So, you know, maybe they're not going to do it, there's not an app to recur and come back and do the same thing and have to go through the same process and cause the court a lot of money to, justice and a lot of money to go to court and do all the filing and stuff like that. That didn't work. That didn't work. It seems like this judge is like, look,

I understand what you feel the need to do. You're at this point where you have to do something more extreme to get people to get the government's attention. However, this is not the way to do it. This is very dangerous. It's dangerous for people. It's dangerous for you. And we need to keep everything safe. So unfortunately, if you even though you feel the need to do this, you have to be you have to be punished. And so they were given five and four year sentences. So one person received five,

four people received four year sentences. That's a lot of time. A lot of the people who are in this, some of them, I'm looking at pictures of them, some of them look really young, some of them look sort of middle-aged, that could take a lot of time in developing your career and doing something maybe a little bit more positive in terms of getting results. We don't know if these will, you know, you know, come into results. We don't know if this directly affected the election. I

highly doubt it. But this is what the people who are doing these types of protests feel. They feel like they can have an effect if they get the attention of the government. To get the attention of the government, they have to do something big to get in the news so that they get the attention of the government. Unfortunately, when you do that, you do pay the price. And it's something, as scientists and conservationists, that we need to

really evaluate on whether you're willing to make that sacrifice. They're nonviolent, hopefully. And you still have to pay the consequences, because there are consequences. There are laws to disrupting major highways, or a bridge, or something like that. There are laws in place to stop that from happening. And you have to be ready to serve that consequence. In this case, it's four to five years. That's a long time away from maybe your families, away from your jobs, away from just

freedom. That's a tough thing, a tough road to go by. I feel for the people who have to do this sentence, I'm sure that's not what they first expected, and it's probably going to be devastating towards them, but it's one of the things that we have to consider when we start to advocate for something in these types of manners, where you're trying to get the attention, you got their attention, but with that attention comes attention on you and comes the law. And I'm not saying that it's right. Do

I think they deserve four to five years? No, I don't think they deserve four to five years in my personal opinion However, I'm sure a lot of the people who were blocked on the m25 and on those on those bridges that couldn't get to work or things I feel a different way and that's unfortunate. That's the way that's the way it goes is it's a sacrifice that you have to be willing to take and you have to be willing to make and Be willing to suffer the consequences for that Um,

it sucks. I never want to see anybody happen, uh, you know, that happen to anybody, um, nor do I want to see anything violent happen because of, of protest. And unfortunately, in certain situations that's happened, whether it be environmental or non-environmental, um, but they were able to speak their voices, and unfortunately, it just, the way they went about it, it just didn't jive with, with the law, and that sucks. Um, you know, and I,

I really do feel for them. I really do. That's a very different change in their life and I'm sure they didn't expect that they were going to have to do that. And unfortunately, they feel that they need to do that. And that's where a lot of people who kind of just throw up their hands and be like, I give up. There's nothing that we can do. I've talked to people that way. There's nothing that we can do. We are going to damage the planet. We

are going to go through climate change and we're just going to have to suffer the consequences. generations from now or even now. And people are going to lose their livelihoods, people are going to lose their homes, people are going to lose lives from it. But unfortunately, nobody's ever going to do it. We're controlled by something different. Greed has controlled the government for a long time, and money has controlled the government for a long time, and fossil fuel

companies have that money. And we've seen they're willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that that happens, including global campaigns to deny climate change. and global campaigns to say, hey, you know what? It's already happening. You can just give up. There's no point. They've actually come out and said that. That's one of their tactics, just to say, just give up. It's OK. Don't worry about it. We'll still be OK. It's not going

to affect you directly. It'll affect you indirectly, and then maybe later on, generations down the road. But it's OK. We're making our money, and you get to be happy. And don't worry about it. And that's really what it's come down to. There's some people feel that they have to make more extreme decisions and try and get attention in more extreme ways. And that's not going to stop, unfortunately. I don't think a four to five year sentence for some people are going to think that that's the price

that they're willing to pay. And I don't know if these protesters are, but you know, they did, and they're going to. And so other people, I don't think this Just Stop Oil group are going to stop. They have a mission, and people, like, you know, other people were, last year were sentenced to two to three years, and they're fine, and, you know, the others are still protesting. So, I think this is a movement, this

is a movement that's going to be tough to stop. Unfortunately, you know, I think a lot of people give I don't want to give any protesters or anybody talking about climate change a bad name because of Just Stop Oil. There's definitely ramifications to the movement on that. But for the most part, a lot of people are just, you know, like you and me, who are just like, look, we have to do something about climate change. There's

a lot of work that we need to do. The first thing is putting the right people in politics and getting the right people to run in politics and to be able to do the right thing. And it doesn't necessarily mean you have to run for office, but you can get involved within your local city, you can get involved within your local county, your local province, whatever that might be. And that could be with a nonprofit organization, that could be volunteering on

committees for government. There's all those, there's all different types of ways that you can take part. So I highly recommend that you do that and look into it before you go to these extreme ways. Hopefully you don't feel the need to do that anytime soon. But that's it for today's episode. I'd love to hear what you think. You can leave a comment on Spotify or on

YouTube. You can also hit me up on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the HowToProtectTheOcean podcast. I'm your host, Angelo, and have a great day. We'll talk to you next time,