The activists of the Collectif Antigone think so, and the verdict in their trial will be delivered tomorrow (March 14th, 2025). I had the privilege of acting as their climate science expert witness at their trial last November.

You can read about their reasoning and their message published in Le Devoir here. I’ll translate it into English below:

Action, our logical response to climate inaction

Alix Ruhlmann, Emily Zajko, Mathilde Horvais, Olivier Huard, Michèle Lavoie, Jesse Richman, Jacob Pirro, Mathis Huissoud, Mélanie J. Gervais et Marie-Josée Béliveau – The authors sign this text as activists working to tackle the climate crisis.

When you think about it, it seems totally insane that in 2025, we still have to fight for climate and social justice.

Since 1972, many countries have agreed that we must work together to preserve a livable climate. Yet on October 19, 2022, we were arrested for pointing out the obvious. That day, we non-violently blocked an oil terminal in Montreal East. The objective was simple: to block the release of a poison into the environment. The blockade was intended to serve as a message, to remind everyone that the climate is in crisis and that, as a result, life on Earth is threatened. And that despite the urgency, we are collectively and individually doing too little.

Two years later, we are ten activists waiting for a verdict. On Friday March 14, we’ll find out whether the judge finds us guilty or not. Guilty of sounding the alarm. Guilty of daring to challenge a system that allows extractive giants and complicit governments to gobble up what we all depend on to survive. Because yes, in the face of a disrupted climate, nothing less than our very survival is at stake. The climate crisis is not a question of ideology or political party. It’s about protecting the living. Who could blame us for trying to save what can still be saved?

The climate has been collapsing for decades. We are now at a point of no return. We are in what some call “the window of opportunity”. If we fail to act now, we will trigger “positive feedback loops”. These mechanisms include, for example, the disappearance of ice caps, the melting of permafrost and the death of coral reefs. Once set in motion, these processes will make a major contribution to climate change. And it will be almost impossible to stop them.

So it’s vital to do everything we can now. Waiting for “the right moment” means accepting to miss the boat. And in this scenario, science fiction becomes reality. We’ll be facing massive population displacement, millions of deaths, increased violence, disruption of agricultural production, more “natural” disasters…

Faced with such prospects, thousands of people are taking action. Through our actions, we are part of a worldwide movement that has tried out a multitude of options, moving from individual to collective gestures, from soft initiatives to more direct action. We’ve encouraged and facilitated bicycle travel, local consumption, second-hand goods and zero waste. We’ve launched and signed petitions and made donations to environmental organizations. We’ve worked for NGOs fighting for climate justice, planted trees, organized demonstrations. We’ve alerted the media, reported the news. We’ve studied and taught about the climate crisis. We spoke out, went to United Nations climate conferences. We went into politics and sued the government for climate inaction.

Even so, we’ve seen greenwashing, ineffective gestures and empty promises continue to pile up.

Yet scientific analysis suggests that social movements are more likely to succeed when they incorporate forms of direct action such as civil disobedience. On October 19, 2022, we had to act. Failure was no longer an option.

The climate crisis is worsening at a terrifying rate. But more and more of us are rejecting this inertia. Rising together to choose hope over resignation. In the face of the collective challenges ahead, solidarity is our last chance.

Whatever the court’s verdict on Friday, the living will continue to defend itself, because in the face of inaction, the only logical response is action.

UPDATE: The trial judge accepted my testimony about the state of our climate emergency, but misunderstood or disregarded other experts’ testimony about social change and civil disobedience. He maintained that the activists had other options, and essentially threw the book at them.