While I don’t agree with everything she says, I think Brigette DePape is brave, and her act of protest makes me feel a bit more hopeful about the future. The fact that there are young people who are intensely concerned with ethical questions and willing to take action is encouraging.
At the same time, I think she is wrong to hope that she can spark a popular uprising against the recently elected government. As the election shows, they maintain at least a plurality of support among Canadian voters.
On the issue of climate change, I think the central problem is the destructive logic I wrote about earlier today. People can enjoy the many benefits of burning fossil fuels, while forcing the costs of climate change on people in other places and in future generations. A such, it is very difficult for a democracy to adopt fair climate change policies. The people who are benefiting from burning fossil fuels are present and influential right now, while the victims of climate change are largely voiceless.
Taking the interests of climate change victims seriously requires that people think about more than their own immediate welfare. Beyond that, it requires that people voluntarily sacrifice some of the benefits they can derive from burning fossil fuels, because of the harm they are causing to other people by doing so.
Your’s is a curious take on this young person’s act of civil disobedience: “The fact that there are young people who are intensely concerned with ethical questions and willing to take action is encouraging.”
How sad it was that “concerned with ethical questions” prompted her to break the oath she took as a Senate page. I guess in your world, as apparently in her’s, personal morality can be easily sacrificed.
Fortunately for her, being Canadian allows her the right to be as unprincipled as she wishes to be. I, for one, see her has a spoiled little brat who needs to learn some manners.
I don’t think this was a clearcut case of civil disobedience, since I don’t think DePape broke any law.
Still, a central tenet of civil disobedience is applicable here – namely, that there more important and less important moral obligations. We acknowledge this in criminal law – it can be acceptable to break a law to prevent a worse outcome from taking place. For instance, someone with an expired driving license can drive somebody who is bleeding to death to a hospital, then use the defence of necessity if they are ever charged for the crime.
Judging for yourself when one ethical aim trumps another is a key part of ethical reasoning, and I find it encouraging to see someone make such a judgment and then follow through on it.
And, of course, DePape ignores her moral obligation to Parliament regarding the oath she took as a Senate page. This person seems to lack any moral/ethical compass.
You over-reach here by choosing a life-and-death issue to help make your case. You write, “someone with an expired driving license can drive somebody who is bleeding to death to a hospital, then use the defence of necessity if they are ever charged for the crime.”
DePape had no such serious moral dilemma. Her’s was a crass, self-serving one. Then for her to compare Canada to the Arab world and to suggest we have anything to learn from them about democracy was an insult to all Canadians.
A lot of the world’s moral progress has been driven or inspired by the disobedience of the young – from the Civil Rights Movement in the United States to the tank man in Tiananmen Square.
The page vs. the PM: Depape leads Ottawa protest
Posted on Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 7:25 pm by BJ Siekierski
A week after interrupting the throne speech and gaining international media attention, Brigette DePape took aim the Prime Minister again — this time with throngs of protesters in a march to the Conservative national convention.
“My name is Brigette. Some of you may know me as the rogue page,†she said, standing atop a bench in Ottawa’s Dundonald Park.
Many groups, including the striking Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Movement, cheered her on.
Inside the Keystone XL Protests
From Washington DC, Brigette DePape’s latest Tyee dispatch.
By Brigette DePape, Today, TheTyee.ca
Since my last dispatch on The Tyee, I’ve arrived in Washington, D.C. to join protests against the Keystone XL Pipeline. It’s been incredibly inspiring. Over the course of 14 days, people have been using their outrage at injustice to boldly take action.
Each day, upwards of a hundred people gathered with signs reading “Stop the deadline” while singing songs like “Which Side Are You On.” In total, more than a thousand people risked arrest. People from all walks of life called on Obama to reject the pipeline, which would transport our tar sands oil from Northern Alberta all the way to Texas to be exported to international markets.
Why?
Not only are the tar sands destroying the social and environmental fabric of Alberta, polluting water when hundreds of children lack access to clean water, creating health problems from asthma to cancer, and undermining Indigenous rights; they are leading us towards irreversible climate change.