Despite decades of scientists’ warnings about climate and ecological breakdown, record-breaking heat and escalating environmental disasters have become commonplace. Science has been attacked, dismissed and politicised, and the world is accelerating in a terrifying direction.

To scientists this can feel particularly overwhelming. So what can we do?

Scientific knowledge alone hasn’t generated the urgent societal action many scientists expected. Therefore, to protect ourselves, future generations and countless other species, some scientists have started to reflect on their tactics. Not prepared to be neutral in the face of such an all encompassing threat, scientists like us have been asking what our role should be in an era when our planet’s life support systems are crumbling so rapidly, while governments and officials pour fuel on the flames.

Answering this question has led some of us to join social movements and take part in peaceful protests. Three years ago, a group of scientists were arrested in the course of protesting the UK government’s decisions to licence new oil fields. We were among the lab-coat wearing protesters who took the science to the government that day, pasting huge posters explaining the dangers of new fossil fuels onto the windows of the department that was committing us to them for decades to come.

It was a surreal experience, recently documented in the short film

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