London 5 April, 2024, for immediate release: Mike Lynch-White, Scientist Rebellion[1] co-founder and prior climate and Palestine activist, received a 17-month suspended sentence and 262 hours of community service for his involvement in protesting against the impact of aviation on climate change. His co-defendants, Extinction Rebellion co-founder Roger Hallam and Dr. Larch Maxey, also each received suspended sentences of two years and 200 and 300 hours community service, respectively.
In September 2019, the three activists were charged[2] with “conspiracy to commit a public nuisance” in connection to the Heathrow Pause[3]action. At the very end of the trial, after the defendants had given evidence and closing speeches, the presiding judge, HHJ Edmunds, rewrote his own prior directions to the jury to ensure Roger Hallam and co-defendant Dr Larch Maxey were found guilty. A third co-defendant,Valerie Brown, had been previously acquitted. Mike Lynch-White had pleaded guilty while in prison.
Mike asserts that, “the scientific community have a duty to be honest with the public. Yet in private, they freely admit that 1.5ºC is dead, and we are out of time to avoid a climate catastrophe. The community say the truth will hinder climate action, but of course the complete opposite is true—only when the public is empowered with the truth will our response truly begin.”
The Heathrow Pause action consisted of flying toy drones at head height. While it did not take place at the airport itself, it did fall within the surrounding 5.1 km no-fly restriction zone. Prior to the action, the activists had announced their intentions publicly in order to raise awareness of the planned construction of a new runway. This also allowed authorities ample time to take any precautionary measures to avoid any threats to life or aircraft. During the trial, a Heathrow Airport representative admitted that they were always going to change their own rules and keep planes in the air, so no disruption was caused.
Co-defendant Dr. Larch Maxey said, “Most of us don’t actually fly, whilst the elite 1% take over 20% of overseas flights. Subsidising aviation and Heathrow’s third runway are plane madness. So it’s the height of hypocrisy for our aviation-fuel-soaked government to be putting me in prison for trying to stop runway madness whilst they crash through their own carbon targets.”
Last year, Mike received one of the longest prison sentences[4] in modern UK history for his non-violent protest with Palestine Action[5] at a weapons factory that supplied drone parts to Israel. During the protest, property was damaged and the factory temporarily closed down. The judge imposed an unusually long prison term as Mike had already been arrested more than 15 times for climate-related actions.
Such condemnations are part of an ongoing crackdown on non-violent protests that is having “a significant chilling effect on civil society and the exercise of fundamental freedoms,” according to Michel Forst[6], the UN Special Rapporteur on environmental defenders. Further, in April 2023, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk had expressed concern[7] that increasingly draconian UK anti-protest laws appear “to target in particular peaceful actions used by those protesting about human rights and environmental issues.”
Find out more about Scientist Rebellion at an upcoming Welcome Meeting[8] and help support[9] other scientists on trial.
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Mike Lynch-White began his PhD in Theoretical Physics at St Andrews, after gaining a 1st class honours in the same subject at University College London (UCL), but after he studied the climate science himself, he realised we are on track for catastrophe and rapid, systemic change was required. Despite having always wanted to be an academic, he gave up his dream to fight for change. He became a full-time activist with Extinction Rebellion[10], getting arrested numerous times, and then self-taught civil disobedience theory and devised the mobilisation strategy of Scientist Rebellion, propelling it into one of the fastest growing activist groups in modern history.
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Scientist Rebellion (SR) is an international movement of scientists and academics from more than 34 countries calling for peaceful civil disobedience in the face of policy failure regarding the climate crisis. SR calls on scientists and scientific bodies to have the courage to tell the public what they say is true in private – 1.5°C is dead, and some level of climate catastrophe is unavoidable.
Scientist Rebellion is supported by individual donations and funding from the Climate Emergency Fund[11] for its mobilisation, training, structure-building, and educational work.
