The defendants standing in front of a courthouse in West Roxbury
Credit: Peter Bowden.

When politics damage climate, civil disobedience should be allowed to save the day, Massachusetts court rules.

For almost a year now, hundreds of Massachusetts locals have fought to thwart the construction of a high-pressure fracked gas pipeline, set to run through five miles of West Roxbury, a Boston neighborhood. The protests got increasingly heated, with people sitting in and refusing to vacate holes that were dug for the pipeline, eventually culminating in some 200 arrests. Many of them faced criminal charges for trespassing and disturbing the peace.

This Tuesday, however, the final 13 protesters facing charges were found not responsible by a Massachusetts judge; the potential environmental and public health impacts of the pipeline – including its potential role in deepening climate change – made the public’s disobedience legally necessary, he ruled.

Legally illegal
Although environment and climate activists have been using the necessity defense more and more in recent years to tackle fossil fuel infrastructure development, this is the first case […]