Julian Roger Hallam (born 4 May 1966) [1] is a British environmental activist, a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, [2] [3] cooperative federation organisation Radical Routes, [4] the political party Burning Pink, [5] , Just Stop Oil, [6] and Insulate Britain. [7]
Hallam was raised by a Methodist family. [8] He was previously an organic farmer on a 10-acre (4-hectare) smallholding near Llandeilo in South Wales; he attributes the destruction of his business to a series of extreme weather events. [9] [10]
Between at least 2017 and early 2019 he was studying for a PhD at King's College London, [11] researching how to achieve social change through civil disobedience and radical movements. [12]
In January 2017, in an action to urge King's College London to divest from fossil fuels, Hallam and another person, David Durant, using water-soluble chalk-based spray paint, [10] painted "Divest from oil and gas", "Now!" and "Out of time" on the university's Strand campus entrance. [13] [11] and were fined £500. [14] In February they again spray painted the university's Great Hall causing a claimed £7,000 worth of damage and were arrested. [13]
In May 2019, after a three-day trial at Southwark Crown Court for criminal damage, they were cleared by a jury of all charges, having argued in their defence that their actions were a proportionate response to the climate crisis, with Hallam arguing his actions were lawful under an exemption in the Criminal Damage Act that permits damage if it protects another's property. [11] [15] In March 2017, Hallam went on hunger strike to demand the university divest from fossil fuels—the institution had millions of pounds invested in fossil fuels but no investment in renewable energy. [14] Five weeks after the first protest, the university removed £14m worth of investments from fossil fuel companies and pledged to become carbon neutral by 2025. [10] [16]
Later in 2017, Hallam was a leading member of activist group Stop Killing Londoners, [17] an anti-pollution campaign [18] of mass civil disobedience that they hoped would result in the arrest and imprisonment of activists. [19] Hallam with Stuart Basden and two others were prosecuted and some pledged to go on hunger strike if imprisoned. [20]
Hallam is a co-founder of environmental pressure group Extinction Rebellion, with Gail Bradbrook and Simon Bramwell. [2] [12] [21] [22] He stood unsuccessfully in the 2019 European Parliament election in the London constituency as an independent, winning 924 of the 2,241,681 votes cast (0.04%). [23]
Hallam was interviewed by Stephen Sackur on BBC HARDtalk on 15 August 2019. [24]
Hallam and four other activists were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance on 12 September 2019, the day before a planned action to pilot drones in the exclusion zone around Heathrow Airport in order to disrupt flights. [25] Three days later, in an action organised by Heathrow Pause, Hallam was arrested in the vicinity of Heathrow Airport apparently in breach of bail conditions from the previous arrest requiring him to not to be within 5 miles (8 kilometres) of any airport or possess drone equipment. [26] He was remanded in custody until 14 October. [27]
In an interview with Die Zeit on 20 November 2019, Hallam said genocides are "like a regular event" in history and called the Holocaust "just another fuckery in human history". [28] [29] This comment was made in the context of a broader discussion on genocides throughout human history, where Hallam compared the Nazi Holocaust to the Congo genocide; as he stated the "fact of the matter is, millions of people have been killed in vicious circumstances on a regular basis throughout history" adding that the Belgians "went to the Congo in the late 19th century and decimated it." [30] Hallam's controversial comparison drew support from African activists the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide! Campaign, who, while critical of the tone of his language, lauded his honesty and willingness to highlight crimes committed by colonial powers in Africa. [31] However, his comments about the Holocaust, perceived by some as anti-Semitic, resulted in his expulsion from Extinction Rebellion. [32]
In a self-published pamphlet written in prison, Hallam wrote that the climate crisis would lead to mass rape, and featured a story in which the reader's female family members are gang raped and the reader forced to watch. The pamphlet was condemned by Farah Nazeer, CEO of Women's Aid. [32] When Der Spiegel replied to Hallam that "You can't blame the climate change for the rape of women during war", Hallam's response was "No, climate change is just the tubes that the gas comes down in the gas chamber. It's just a mechanism through which one generation kills the next generation". [33]
In September 2023, Hallam was ranked thirty-fourth on the New Statesman's Left Power List of influential left-wing figures in the UK. [34]
Hallam was arrested in a dawn raid at his home on 18 October 2023. [6]
Hallam was interviewed by conservationist Chris Packham in the 2023 documentary Chris Packham: Is It Time to Break The Law?. [35]
Daniel Marc Hooper, known by the nickname Swampy, is a British environmental activist. He was involved in a number of environmental protests in the 1990s, becoming nationally famous after spending a week in a tunnel aiming to stop the expansion of the A30 in Fairmile, Devon, in 1996. In 2020, he was arrested attempting to stop the destruction of Jones Hill Wood for High Speed 2 (HS2) and then joined a Stop HS2 protest at Euston Square Gardens in London.
Natasha Walter is a British feminist writer and human rights activist. She is the author of a novel, A Quiet Life (2016), three works of non-fiction: Before the Light Fades: a memoir of grief and resistance, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, and The New Feminism. She is also the founder of the charity Women for Refugee Women.
The modern environmental direct action movement in the United Kingdom started in 1991 with the formation of the first UK "Earth First!" group for a protest at Dungeness nuclear power station. Within two years, there were fifty Earth First groups and activists linked with other parties in the road protest movement. There were large camps at Twyford Down and the M11 link road protest. By 1997, the Government had decided to reduce its road-building plans by two thirds.
Rupert Read is an academic and a Green Party campaigner, a former spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, and the current director of the Climate Majority Project. He is the author of several books on Wittgenstein, philosophy, and/or climate change, most recently Why Climate Breakdown Matters, Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos, and Do You Want to Know the Truth? Until 2023, Read was a reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia where he was awarded – as Principal Investigator – Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funding for two projects on "natural capital". His other major recent academic focus has been on the precautionary principle, having contributed substantially to work co-authored with Nassim Nicholas Taleb on applying the principle to questions of genetic modification of organisms. In further work, Read has theorised the utility of the precautionary principle in a wide range of areas, including: climate change, the environment, as well as financial and technology sectors.
Tamsin Omond is a British author, environmental activist and journalist. They have campaigned for the government of the United Kingdom to take action to avoid climate change.
Fossil fuel divestment or fossil fuel divestment and investment in climate solutions is an attempt to reduce climate change by exerting social, political, and economic pressure for the institutional divestment of assets including stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments connected to companies involved in extracting fossil fuels.
Extinction Rebellion is a UK-founded global environmental movement, with the stated aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse. Extinction Rebellion was established in Stroud in May 2018 by Gail Bradbrook, Simon Bramwell, Roger Hallam, Stuart Basden, along with six other co-founders from the campaign group Rising Up!
Gail Marie Bradbrook is a British environmental activist and molecular biophysicist who co-founded the environmental social movement Extinction Rebellion.
Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg is a Swedish environmental activist known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation.
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference is a book by climate activist Greta Thunberg. It was originally published on 30 May 2019. It consists of a collection of eleven speeches which she has written and presented about global warming and the climate crisis.
Extinction Rebellion (XR) is an international "non-violent civil disobedience" movement carrying out demonstrations worldwide to highlight governments' inaction on climate change. Since 2018, Extinction Rebellion has taken a variety of actions in Europe, the US, and rapidly elsewhere in the world, to urge political and economic forces to take action amid the climate crisis. Although, their non-violent disobedience protests are an effort to generate attention around environmental issues, XR activists have become known for civil disobedience and disruptive tactics.
Extinction Rebellion Youth is the autonomous youth wing of the global environmental movement Extinction Rebellion (XR), made up of activists under the age of 30. It has the stated aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse. XR Youth was established in the United Kingdom in February 2019 by a collective of young environmental activists from XR. In contrast to the rest of XR, the youth wing is more centred around climate justice and consideration of the Global South and indigenous peoples. As of September 2020, there are over 200 branches globally, including over 80 in the UK.
Animal Rising is a British animal activist movement with the stated aim of compelling social change towards animal rights and a plant-based food system. They justify their actions with the impact of animal agriculture on climate change, species extinction and ecosystem breakdown.
A land defender, land protector, or environmental defender is an activist who works to protect ecosystems and the human right to a safe, healthy environment. Often, defenders are members of Indigenous communities who are protecting property rights of ancestral lands in the face of expropriation, pollution, depletion, or destruction.
Ou Hongyi, also known by her English name Howey Ou, is a Chinese environmental activist who organises the school strike for climate in Guilin in southern China, calling for more action to limit greenhouse gas emissions by China and thus climate change.
Impossible Rebellion was a series of nonviolent climate change protests in the United Kingdom organised by Extinction Rebellion (XR), from 23 August 2021 to 4 September 2021. The protests particularly targeted the City of London to raise awareness of the role of the financial sector in climate change. Protesters during the Impossible Rebellion demanded that the UK government cease new investments in the fossil fuel industry. XR also demand that the government declare a climate emergency, reach net zero carbon emissions by 2025 and create a citizens' assembly on climate change.
Elijah McKenzie-Jackson is a visual artist focused on common themes of climate justice, based in London and New York City, known for noting intersectional themes; for example indigenous rights. McKenzie-Jackson is co-founder at Waic Up, an organizer of Youth Strike for Climate, and is a United Nations Togetherband Ambassador. He is one of the organizers who started Fridays for Future UK, in February 2019.
Just Stop Oil is a British environmental activist group. Using civil resistance, direct action, vandalism and traffic obstruction, the group aims for the British government to commit to ending new fossil fuel licensing and production. The group was founded in February 2022 and began protesting at English oil terminals in April 2022. The group has received particular attention, positive and negative, for its methods of activism.
Scientist Rebellion is an international scientists' environmentalist group that campaigns for degrowth, climate justice, and more effective climate change mitigation.
Deanna Maree "Violet" Coco, usually known as Violet CoCo, is an Australian climate activist who was briefly jailed on remand for blocking the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 2022. She successfully appealed her 15-month jail sentence, with the convictions remaining, in March 2023, after the judge found that her conviction was based on false information from the police about an ambulance being blocked by her protest. She was instead put on a 12 month conditional release order.
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