Christian environmental activists fined by U.K. court for causing damage to government building

A small group of environmental activists in the United Kingdom continues to show defiance despite having been fined by the court for causing damage to a government building.

"We do not agree with today's judgement," Ruth Jarman, one of the five Christian activists, said on Wednesday. "The point of the law is to maintain justice, stability and order."

The Hammersmith Magistrates Court in London found Jarman, Father Martin Newell, Phil Kingston, Westley Ingram, and Helen Whitall, all members of Christian Climate Action, guilty for having defaced the walls of the Department for Energy and Climate Change in November. They whitewashed the walls and painted "Department for Extreme Climate Change" over the department's name. They represented themselves during the hearings and said that they had a "lawful exercise" under the Criminal Damage Act, Section 5. They were nonetheless ordered to pay a criminal damage fine of £1,700 or £340 each.

"Climate change threatens all these things so fundamentally that the law should be used to defend those who are trying to stop climate change, not those who are creating it," Jarman said. "We think DECC should have been in the dock, not us. The department speaks fine words, but its actions scupper any possibility of sufficient global action on climate change."

Michael Northcott, Professor of Ethics at the University of Edinburgh, said that the group's civil disobedience was non-violent, and in a peaceable way tried "to expose the hypocrisy of current UK government energy policies." He said that such acts over the history of the United Kingdom were what made the country what it is today.

"The climate talks in Paris were akin to leaders gathered in a burning house agreeing to only buy flame retardant furniture in the future," said Ingram, according to Blue and Green Tomorrow. "I do not believe we have damaged DECC's building, because we have not affected its utility; if we have done anything, it is to damage the propaganda value of the building by exposing it for what it really is." 

Whitall, meanwhile, said that their actions were reasonable under the circumstances. She said that while she finds that it is essential to act out for love for God and others, she has a responsibility as a Christian "to speak out against injustice to protect all that God loves, human and non-human," expecially when she feels that justice and truth are being silenced. This may sometimes mean that she has to take non-violent direct action, like Christ and the prophets.

"Pope Francis has called on Christians to go further in opposing climate change and we have tried to answer that call in faithfulness to Jesus who was also tried and found guilty by a court," said Newell.