ABSTRACT
Black Summer was preceded by the global rise of two climate protest movements: Extinction Rebellion and the school strike movement. During Black Summer, ‘quiet Australians’ joined climate activists in a rolling sequence of protests and rallies. The advent of the pandemic, however, put an end to public gatherings, and climate activism went largely digital. This chapter documents the phenomenon of climate activism throughout 2020 and highlights the willingness of climate activists to accept pandemic-related constraints on their activities. It contrasts this with the stance of participants in the Black Lives Matter movement. The latter movement contributed to a more nuanced understanding of climate justice; thus, the narrative of activist disruption acknowledged the intersection between the climate crisis and other emergencies including that of racial injustice. The chapter analyses this development in the context of existing critiques of climate activist movements, and scalar considerations in the framing of the climate crisis. Finally, it considers the role of climate activists in Australian courtrooms throughout the year, focusing in particular upon their use of the extraordinary emergency defence. It is argued that this can be viewed as a popular invocation of emergency, in contrast to emergency as executive declaration.
