Undemocratic Climate Protests

GARCIA GIBSON, FRANCISCO

Journal of Applied Philosophy

Wiley

Año: 2021

0264-3758

Climate change activists sometimes engage in protests that exert coercion on governments, businesses, and citizens, instead of protests that just attempt to persuade them. I argue that these coercive protests are sometimes undemocratic, despite recent attempts in the literature to describe them as democratic. Coercive climate protests do not always improve deliberative decision-making, and they are a means of exerting control over official decisions that is not available to all affected. I then claim that the fact that some of these protests are undemocratic is not a decisive objection against them. Climate change poses such an extremely serious threat to basic rights worldwide ? risking hundreds of millions of lives ? that people´s right to democracy is outweighed when infringing it is a necessary means for achieving climate change mitigation.