As Tad DeLay writes in Future of Denial, we are all, in a Freudian sense, repressing the reality of a climate changed future. It doesn’t bear thinking about, so we’d rather not. Reckoning with it leads to a daunting unravelling of the logic that structures our world. Under the Sky News announcement of the prison sentences on X, people made such comments as: ‘Common sense prevails’; ‘Great news ... throw the keys away’; ‘About time!! Should have given them ten years!’
Sitting in a road is annoying; being late to a job interview is inconvenient; missing a funeral is upsetting. But the mass displacement of people, the failure of crops, the loss of entire species: these are rationalised as ‘externalities’, or ignored, or imagined as a distant prospect that will somehow be averted with capitalist ingenuity. The imprisonment of those who are trying to afghanistan phone data shake us out of this denial is discombobulating. Describing them as ‘fanatics’, Judge Hehir sentenced Roger Hallam to five years and the other activists to four years each, the longest sentences for peaceful protest in British history. Before last week, the record was held by Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker, who received three-year sentences for scaling the Dartford Crossing bridge and blocking traffic for two days in October 2022.
Trowland and Decker argued that the disruption they caused was proportionate to the urgency of the climate crisis, referring to the immense human suffering already caused. Sentencing them, the judge inverted this logic: ‘You plainly believed you knew better than everyone else and it did not matter if people suffered in consequence so long as it allowed you to impart your message. In short, to hell with everyone else.’ Decker, a German citizen who had previously had leave to remain in the UK, is now on immigration bail. The Home Office tracks him by a GPS ankle tag while he appeals a deportation order that would separate him from his partner and her children.