Impartial Prophets: The Role of Scientists in Climate Advocacy
Academic papers on climate change pasted by scientists on the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport building in Berlin, Germany.
Photo: Stefan Müller
“No longer does Phoebus have his chamber, nor mantic laurel,
nor prophetic spring and the speaking water has been silenced.”
In 362 AD, Roman emperor Julian received this message from the famous Oracle of Delphi. It was to be the oracle’s last recorded prophecy before the temple at Delphi was destroyed twenty years later. All things considered, it was a polite exit. For most, knowledge of imminent destruction would be cause for alarm, a call to action. Yet the oracle proceeded with business as usual, answering questions like always, until her permanent retirement. Two centuries later, following a brief climate protest in Chicago, the scientific community faces a similarly binding situation.
In December of 2022, earth and climate scientists from around the world gathered in Chicago for the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), one of the largest international earth science organizations. On December 15, the conference was unexpectedly interrupted during a lunchtime plenary session. As the session’s pre-recorded introduction began, climate scientists Rose Abramoff and Peter Kalmus took the stage, holding a banner that read, “Out of the lab & into the streets.” Within seconds, staff grabbed the banner and escorted both individuals offstage. The AGU withdrew the research that Abramoff and Kalmus had presented earlier in the week and expelled them from the conference.
Abramoff, a plant and soil researcher at the Department of Energy-affiliated Oak Ridge National Laboratory, frequently collaborates in climate activism with Kalmus, a data scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. However, Abramoff’s position changed after the AGU conference. Oak Ridge fired her for the protest at AGU, which, according to the lab, violated their code of business ethics by misusing government resources. Shortly after, on January 10, Abramoff published an op-ed in The New York Times announcing her termination from Oak Ridge and urging support for scientist activism.
Oak Ridge’s actions appear to represent the first instance of an earth scientist being fired for climate activism. Following Abramoff’s op-ed, Oak Ridge and the AGU were met with heavy criticism for their responses to the protest. Other scientists have noted that Abramoff’s firing could represent a serious threat to the increasing number of researchers taking part in climate activism. For climate scientists, speaking out on climate change could now come with fears of termination by employers or, for students and early-career researchers, fears of losing future academic and career opportunities.
However, these fears are not unprecedented—they’ve grown out of a long-standing conflict between scientists and politics. Scientists are often seen as non-biased providers of information, a role that, conventionally, has no space for politics or opinion. “Climate scientists have struggled as a community and as individuals for decades with how vocal to be in public forums and whether to express opinions about what [should be done] about climate change”, says Yarrow Axford, an AGU member and Northwestern Earth and Planetary Sciences professor studying/researching prehistoric climate change in the Arctic. “[You] feel like you are culturally not allowed to speak up about [climate] solutions with a need to act, because of the need to maintain the appearance of scientific objectivity.”
So, earth and climate scientists face the same circumstances as the late Oracle: should they, as individuals who see incoming catastrophe, remain suppliers of “objective” scientific information, even when those responsible for taking action (governments who receive scientific information) fail? To use a metaphor of decreasing relevance given the melting of its subject, imagine an iceberg spotted by a ship’s lookout in the near distance. The lookout sounds the alarm, but the ship stays its course. Does the lookout remain where they are? Or is it time to take the helm for themselves?
Breaching the boundary between science and politics is not a new decision for natural scientists. For instance, Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, originally worked as a marine biologist at the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries. Barry Commoner, a prolific environmental activist and author in the mid-20th century, was simultaneously an ecologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “What's different today is the scale of scientists engaging in direct action as representatives of a particular branch of science,” says Keith Woodhouse, a Northwestern history professor who specializes in 20th-century environmentalism. “[You have] people saying, ‘I am a climate scientist. And as a climate scientist, I feel that I need to disrupt business as usual, in order to open people's eyes to what's happening.”
The changes in scientific advocacy that Woodhouse describes are exemplified by Abramoff and Kalmus. Both are members of Scientist Rebellion, an international organization of scientists and academics that promotes climate awareness through non-violent civil disobedience. Activists with the group have blocked bridges, chained themselves to the White House gates, and closed off entryways to private jet terminals.
Members of Scientist Rebellion blockading Berlin’s Crown Prince Bridge on June 6, 2022.
Photo: Stefan Müller
These protests are far from the only ways in which scientists are increasingly getting involved in climate advocacy. Axford notes that, for instance, members of Northwestern’s Earth and Planetary Sciences department teach courses on climate change, write op-eds, and give public talks to school groups and community organizations. Climate action beyond research doesn’t have to be (and often isn’t) loud. “It’s important to recognize that it’s never an either-or. Civil disobedience is usually paired with more moderate forms of advancing one’s political cause,” says Woodhouse.
The protest at the AGU also stands out because of the internal conflict it represents within the scientific community. One of the most prominent scientific organizations in the world, boasting 130,000 members, has halted and condemned a protest acting on the very issues that its members study. In response to Abramoff’s op-ed, AGU CEO Randy Fiser released a statement on January 11, 2023, defending the organization’s actions as an enforcement of the AGU’s Ethics Policy. He also announced that an investigation of the protest by the AGU Ethics Committee had begun.
The AGU received widespread backlash from the scientific community following Fiser’s statement. An open letter calling for the reinstatement of Abramoff and Kalmus’s conference research and the closure of the AGU’s ethics investigation was signed by 2,385 researchers from around the world, half of whom hold an AGU membership. Early in February, U. S. senator Ed Markey (Massachusetts) also wrote to the AGU, calling the sanctions against Abramoff and Kalmus a “gross overreaction” and asking the organization to elaborate and explain their response to the protest.
The AGU is not unfamiliar with climate tensions. Markey’s letter notably questions whether or not the organization has maintained connections with fossil fuel organizations, calling back to a similar controversy in 2016. While many earth scientists study climate change, the field has historically been rooted in fossil fuel extraction; even the first geological maps were made to find coal. So, the modern state of earth science seems contradictory: one side of the discipline attempts to mitigate a crisis that the other side helped to create. For the AGU, this conflict reached critical mass in 2016 during the ExxonKnew movement. The organization, which includes petroleum geologists in its ranks, had been sponsored by ExxonMobil since 2001. Despite outcry from scientists and members of the U.S. Congress, the organization decided to maintain its relationship with Exxon, drawing even sharper criticism. Yet, at the 2017 AGU meeting, the protests seemed to have worked: Exxon was no longer listed as a sponsor.
Ties with fossil fuel corporations have far from disappeared in the earth and climate sciences. The Geological Society of America’s conferences have been sponsored by Chevron as recently as 2022, while the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (with a membership of 40,000) has been directly involved in climate change denial. Axford points out that the AGU has demonstrated less conflict regarding climate change, but believes that the society’s scale fundamentally limits organizational support for more direct forms of activism. “Is that kind of society ever going to be really radically activist? No. It represents a huge range of types of scientists and personalities of scientists.”
On February 17, the AGU concluded its ethics investigation. The organization announced that the research presented by Abramoff and Kalmus at the December meeting would be restored, inviting both scientists to help “expand existing methods of climate activism and engagement through AGU”. Though dependent on the AGU’s eventual reforms, this seems to be a step forward towards organizational support for scientist advocacy and more direct forms of activism.
The Oracle of Delphi was a mythical prophet, seen as separate from the real world and the consequences of its prophecies. However, scientists are not mythical. They have as many feet on the Earth as anybody else. So, as stakeholders in the very future that they study, many climate scientists can no longer stay within the confines of neutrality. They cross the divide between science and politics. The scale of this transition, however, is dependent on scientific organizations and institutions—their actions control the width of the divide.