Direct action and the climate crisis

Here’s a press release from a radical — or “radical” — group that disrupted a conference at Harvard on Friday:

10 climate activists from Extinction Rebellion Boston (XR) and Climate Defiance (CD) took over the stage in front of over 150 attendees at the Harvard University Climate Forum. The non-violent activists disrupted a speech by Executive Director of the Environmental & Energy Law Program, Carrie Jenks, as she spoke at 9:20 am. Reading from a list of demands, chanting, and preventing the event from proceeding, activists held a cloth banner reading “Stop Willow” and “Harvard, Fire Jody” with a picture of Jody Freeman stamped “Climate Criminal.” When Carrie Jenks began her speech on “The Basics of Climate Change: What to Know to Be “Action-Ready”, activists rushed onto the stage, unfurling their banners and chanting, “Willow, Dirty Deal, Jody You Are Killing Me” and “Hey hey, ho ho, Jody Freeman, got to go.”

Immediately following this disruption of the Climate Forum, another group of climate activists from XR Boston and Climate Defiance staged a “Die-In” at the entrance to the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Complex. One of XR Boston’s activists in the Die-In, Susan Lemont, said “With Jody Freeman on the board, ConocoPhillips has made Harvard complicit in the building of the Willow Project. We are already on the path to extinction. Willow just ensures we get there.” Amidst the uproar of the Forum, Die-In participants chanted, then lay on the ground to illustrate countless deaths resulting from fossil fuels.

When asked about his participation in the demonstration, Brian Okum, an activist with XR Boston, replied “Professor Jody Freeman is a lobbyist and board member for ConocoPhillips. We’re here because we find it unacceptable for Harvard, a world leader in education and science, to continue to allow her to represent the university’s response and position on the climate crisis.” Jody Freeman has worked with the Obama and Biden administrations on climate policy. She is the founding director for Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, and the co-chair of Harvard University’s Presidential Committee on Sustainability. Freeman is steering Harvard’s response to the climate crisis.

However, for the past 11 years Jody Freeman has received $350,000 to sit on ConocoPhillips’s Board of Directors. ConocoPhillips is Alaska’s largest crude oil producer and largest owner of exploration leases. Jody Freeman claims to be “working to help the company deliver on, and strengthen its climate commitments,” but during her tenure ConocoPhillips has expanded fossil fuel operations and is now building the Willow Project, which scientists are calling a “carbon bomb.” Because of her paid position on ConocoPhillips, Jody Freeman is legally mandated to put her fiduciary responsibility to ConocoPhillips before her commitment to a sustainable Harvard. In April, the Guardian reported that Jody Freeman lobbied the SEC for watered-down regulations on greenhouse emissions reporting, without disclosing her financial ties and responsibility to ConocoPhillips, potentially violating Harvard University policy. Jody Freeman is using Harvard’s prestige and power to lobby for Big Oil.

Obviously Harvard isn’t going to fire Jody Freeman, and in fact it’s extremely unlikely that the law school or the university will put any real pressure on her to stop taking $350K per year — good grief! — to lend the institution’s name to ConocoPhillips’ greenwashing efforts.

But it’s also true that this kind of activism is making things at least slightly less comfortable for the people profiting from society’s failure to take aggressive action on climate change. In that sense, these kinds of protests, that are almost certainly going to become more common and more forceful as things get worse, are accomplishing something worth doing.