‘A new phase’: why climate activists are turning to sabotage instead of protest
Tougher laws said to be inspiring clandestine attacks on the ‘property and machinery’ of the fossil fuel economy
Damien Gayle
Sat 8 Mar 2025 03.00 EST
It was raining and the sparkling lights of the City of London shone back from the cold, wet pavement as two young men made their way through streets deserted save for a few police and private security. In the sleeping heart of the global financial system, they felt eyes on them from the city’s network of surveillance cameras, but hoped their disguise of high-vis vests and hoods hiding their faces would conceal them.
Reaching Lime Street, they stopped by a maintenance hole and looked around to make sure no one was watching. One took off the cover, located a bundle of black cables and started hacking away. Hours later, an email was circulated to news desks: “Internet cut off to hundreds of insurers in climate-motivated sabotage.”
Five years ago, climate activists from Extinction Rebellion (XR) and the school strikes movement believed getting huge numbers of people on the streets could persuade the powerful to change course on the climate crisis. Then protesters from groups such as Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil (JSO) put their bodies and freedom on the line to disrupt business as usual, in an effort to concentrate minds.
Now, with climate breakdown worsening and fossil fuel emissions showing no signs of peaking, let alone abating, some say it is time to escalate the campaign of disruption, by carrying out clandestine acts of sabotage against the corporations they see as responsible for the destruction of the climate.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/08/a-new-phase-why-climate-activists-are-turning-to-sabotage-instead-of-protest
