In a January 10 New York Times guest essay, Earth scientist and member of Scientist Rebellion Dr. Rose Abramoff announced that she had been fired by her employer, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (a U.S. Department of Energy lab in Knoxville, Tennessee). As she revealed in the essay, this was almost certainly in retaliation for her work with Scientist Rebellion, an organization of scientists that engage in protest and civil disobedience to sound the alarm on the climate crisis and inspire mass resistance.

Specifically, she and NASA scientist Peter Kalmus briefly disrupted the large, prominent American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference last month. The pair climbed onstage, unfurling a banner that read “OUT OF THE LAB & INTO THE STREETS” and called on the scientists in attendance to act. Banner in hand, Peter Kalmus exclaimed: “Our science is showing that the planet is dying. It's terrifying. Everything is at risk. As scientists, we have tremendous leverage, but we need to use it. We can wake everybody up.” For this, they were abruptly removed from the conference and barred from returning. Their research, which had been accepted for presentation at the conference, was withdrawn, and they were threatened with arrest and inquiry into their alleged “professional misconduct.” The AGU also threatened to contact their employers to complain about their action. Dr. Abramoff’s firing came a couple of weeks later.

As Dr. Abramoff lays out in her article, the stakes of the climate emergency are simply too high, and the cost of inaction too great, for people to go along with “business as usual.” And scientists, particularly those who study the ways in which human activity is heating the planet and causing this existential climate crisis, have an outsized role to play in waking people up to this reality.

Many scientists know well how serious the environmental crisis is and know that the actions of the world’s governments, especially the U.S. government, are utterly failing to act in ways commensurate with the depth of the crisis. Scientists like Rose Abramoff and Peter Kalmus, who are taking dramatic actions and calling on others to join them, are doing the kind of thing that other scientists—and everyone else who cares about the planet—should be doing on a much larger scale.

It is telling that the federal government, which runs the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and those in the scientific establishment who run the AGU, cannot tolerate the call for scientists to use their influence to help “wake people up,” and instead threaten Scientist Rebellion for their actions, and fire Dr. Abramoff. This is shameful, morally reprehensible, extremely harmful to the planet and its people, and must not be allowed to stand.

That there has not yet been the level of outcry about this retaliation and the kind of organized expressions of support for Abramoff from climate and other scientists and climate activists is a problem. Whether, in the case of scientists, this is a measure of a “fear factor” that punishment will come to those who take the kind of stand that Rose Abramoff did—and possibly to those who stand with her in support—could be in play. This only underscores the nature and urgency of the problem: the climate crisis and a system that will not tolerate people “doing the right thing,” including scientists “stepping out” from their laboratories to sound and act on the alarm. These are times calling for courage and conviction.

The System Is the Problem... Only Revolution Gives Us a Chance to Save the Planet

The climate crisis is driven by the very workings of this capitalist-imperialist system. The same system that destroys lives and crushes spirits is literally making this planet unlivable through spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere with deadly abandon. As we have clearly demonstrated (see the revcom.us environmental resource page), only through an actual revolution to overthrow this system will we have a fighting chance at stopping the worst possible outcome of this, and of reversing climate change. And as Bob Avakian has analyzed, this is a rare time when revolution becomes more possible  in the U.S., the country that is most responsible for the climate crisis.

In this rare time of accelerating crisis and heightened revolutionary possibility, it is extremely important for people to be stepping up and stepping out around the climate emergency, calling on millions of others to do the same. And it is a time for people concerned about the fate of the planet to raise their sights to and learn more about the revolution that can actually put an end to the wholesale destruction of humanity and the planet—and contribute their understanding and creative energy to the movement for this revolution.