Chris Packham: Ethically responsible climate activists are breaking laws like the Suffragettes

Chris Packham claims that breaking the law to campaign against climate change is “the ethically responsible thing to do” in comments that liken eco-activists to the Suffragettes.

The BBC Springwatch presenter said efforts to conserve the environment have been “too timid”, and suggested that a “radical flank” of the climate change movement could begin planting explosives.

“The Suffragettes set fire to things, smashed a lot of glass, attacked people on the street.

“And in apartheid, they were blowing up trains, blowing up factories. What the climate movement is grudgingly having to accept is that maybe that radical flank will develop.

“At the moment, no one is blowing up an oil refinery, but a lot of people think that is very likely to happen,” Packham told the Radio Times.

The presenter has made a Channel 4 documentary – Chris Packham: Is It Time To Break The Law? – in which he investigates the methods of activists including Just Stop Oil.

Breaking the law is “the ethically responsible thing to do” provided it does not injure anyone or cause lasting environmental damage, Packham concluded.

He suggested that activists should consider their personal circumstances before taking drastic action.

“There’s no point in a young mother doing a climate action which will see her sent to jail, because how can she support her children? That doesn’t mean that she can’t be an important activist,” according to Packham, who said he had no doubt that he would have joined Just Stop Oil if it had been around when he was “a very angry young man” in his 20s.

He said of conservation efforts in Britain to date: “We’re still tinkering around on the edges … saving a few dormice here, a wildflower meadow there, when the rest of our collection of nations has clearly gone to hell in a handcart.”

Activists ‘infuriate and bore people’

Packham said he reserved his greatest ire for fossil fuel lobbyists.

“I struggle to use the word ‘evil’ because it has such a biblical context, but I can’t honestly think of another world for them … They are the most dangerous, insidious force that we face,” he said.

While predicting that climate change protesters will take more drastic action, Packham said that there were more gentle ways of getting the public’s attention.

“We’ve got to be constantly imaginative … We’re not using humour. We’re not using music,” he said, explaining that current methods of protest “essentially infuriate and bore people”.

He hopes that this summer’s fires in southern Europe will spur people into action who previously paid little attention to environmental causes.

“We’re getting to a point where people are starting to feel a bit of discomfort, and that’s what will probably prick their conscience into thinking: ‘Oh God, we’ve got to do something,’” he said.

Packham said he was “mildly resentful” that people directed abuse and threats of physical violence at him because of his environmental views, but he plans to keep going.

In 2021, he told of two masked men setting alight a Land Rover in front of the gates to his house, and said he frequently found dead animals strewn outside his home.