Jonathan Moylan, civil disobedience and our moral priorities
On Monday, a little known activist, Jonathan Moylan, armed with his lap top and a phone, wiped $314 million off Nathan Tinkler’s Whitehaven Coal. Sitting in a forest, Moylan sent out a media release on an ANZ template announcing that that the bank was withdrawing funding from the new Maules Creek coal mine. The release sent Whitehaven’s share prices plummeting and by the time it was found out to be a hoax, over $300 million had been wiped off the company (the share price has now recovered to its original state).
Whilst many have lauded Moylan’s courage to raise the issue of coal mining in Australia, his actions have also been followed by moral outrage. Many have complained that his actions were ideological, morally corrupt, and that he ripped off ‘ordinary people’ for a political stunt.
In starting this debate what Moylan has done therefore is directly pointed out the very strange moral priorities we have in our society; priorities that say that causing a temporary drop in a company’s share price is a more reprehensible act than fuelling global climate change.
Civil disobedience has a long and rich history in challenging the immoral in our society. Whether it is Rosa Parks sitting on the front of a bus, Nelson Mandela standing up to Apartheid, or Gandhi fighting against British colonialism we often revere those who engage in civil disobedience for a true moral cause.
In celebrating these figures what we have done is made an active moral decision; one which said that we think that the immorality of segregation, Apartheid and British Colonialism was bad enough that it was worth breaking the law to oppose them. That breaking the law, even though at times it hurt other people, was the right moral choice.
And it is in understanding civil disobedience in this manner that the response to Moylan’s actions becomes very interesting.
In the criticisms I’ve seen of Moylan the basic argument I can gather against his actions (beyond those of concerns around fraud) is that it was immoral for Moylan to cause such a big drop in company profits and take money off ‘regular shareholders’ (an argument I think is rather weak given that the drop in share prices was so temporary). Building on to this many have used a ‘right to private property’ argument, stating that it is immoral for someone to take away someone else’s private property, and right to have that property, for their own political means. The immorality of Moylan’s actions was his ‘property theft’.
I have to say, I’m no fan of taking money off working people, but the moral outrage to Moylan’s actions point to a very strange moral decision. Whitehaven is investing heavily in a product that is causing serious global destruction. This is a product that fuelling climate change, increasing global temperatures, creating more extreme weather events, and likely causing serious impacts that we are yet to comprehend.
In doing so this is a company that is aiding the destructions of people’s lives all around the world. If the new science is right for example, and we can already see links between climate change and extreme weather, then the actions of companies who are investing in coal, have now started to take the lives of many – the people who have died in floods, fires and cyclones globally. Building into a private property argument these companies have also actively (in a sense that they know coal is causing climate change) taken away people’s property. It’s the property of farmers, whose crops that are now dying, the property of individuals, whose houses are being destroyed in floods, fires and storms, and the property of communities whose infrastructure is being destroyed. If Moylan hurt “ordinary people” whose lives ‘depend on the stock market’, he was doing so to defend the “ordinary people” whose lives depend on the climate.
In the end the outrage points to a pretty odd moral decision to me. We have decided on a moral reasoning that says that causing a drop in share prices is worse than investing in a product that is causing probably one of the worst crises human kind has ever face. We’ve got a moral reasoning that says that the property we have now in the form of shares is more important than people’s houses, the community’s infrastructure, and ultimately people’s lives.
Now, there is a chance that Moylan will end up in gaol over his stunt on Monday. That’s not something I am against (although I will actively question the laws and Government that allows coal mining to continue). That is the price that those who engage in civil disobedience pay. It is part of the act.
But whilst we sit here and get morally indignant about what he has done, I think it is important that we start to question our moral priorities. We need to question the priorities of a Government that places short term profits ahead of our future. We need to question the morals of our community that places short term profit and shareholder gain ahead of long-term planet security.
Because if given a choice between someone causing a temporary blip in a coal companies share price and others who invest in fuelling global climate change, I know which actions I consider more morally reprehensible.