No stopping us now

We won’t save the environment by persecuting those people who are trying to protect it, argues Bruce Mahalski.

The lengths to which climate-action protesters will go to get their message heard is ratcheting up, but so, too, are the level of police action and the severity of the punishments being handed down by the courts. A much harder line is being taken against protesters, with higher costs imposed, along with other penalties.

A Kiwi from the "Just Stop Oil" group was recently given a three-year jail term in England, and it's likely local protesters will face ever more severe penalties if there's a change of government here.

In 2019, Extinction Rebellion members blocked a coal train from reaching the Port of Lyttelton. Nineteen people were arrested, but none were charged. A couple of months later, "dozens of arrests" were made at a big Extinction Rebellion protest in Wellington, but, again, no charges were laid.

Later that year, Christchurch man Dylan Parker became the first Extinction Rebellion activist to be charged in NZ for illegally being in a building, at the New Zealand Gas Industry Forum. This charge was dropped the following year.