President's Dream Colloquium on Obedience and Disobedience

Taking Action on Climate Change

There are two intersecting crises that are the focus of this seminar. One is the ongoing and escalating environmental crisis with respect to anthropogenic climate change. The other is the failure of democracies, including but not limited to Canada, to adequately preserve common goods, especially those that are global. These two failures together produce an emergency-level situation where ongoing government and private practices, such as the continuing and in fact escalating extraction, use, and export of carbon, is precipitating massive shifts in the climate of the planet. Governments are failing to change policies quickly enough, and citizens are limited in their legal options for influencing government actions. The health of the global climate system is a public good, from which we can benefit, and thus towards which we all have obligations of preservation.

Thus, we have conflicting obligations: to follow the laws of our democracy, but also to protect the global common good and the state of the planet that future generations must live on. This is where the question of civil disobedience comes in. At what point do citizens have the right to violate the law in order to avert or reduce global climate change? Is there ever a point at which citizens have not merely the right, but the obligation to engage in civil disobedience towards this end? How do we justify these violations of the law in order to strengthen, rather than undermine, our democracy?

What do citizens owe ourselves, each other, and our governments? This timely colloquium will leverage SFU's position as a thought leader and engaged intellectual environment to examine the rights and obligations to civil disobedience regarding climate change for students, for faculty and staff at SFU, and for the public of the Vancouver area, Canada, and beyond.

The President's Dream Colloquium on Obedience and Disobedience is generously funded by: