A CLIMATE change denier who sprayed graffiti on a mural three times to protest against the use of the expression ‘climate emergency’ has lost his appeal against conviction and sentence on three charges of causing malicious damage.
Ruedi Broderick Dennis Wragg was bound over for six months, ordered to pay the insurance excess on repairing the damage he caused and prosecution costs of £800 when he was convicted by the Assistant Magistrate in January this year.
Mr Wragg did not dispute that he had defaced the Waterfront mural – which depicts annual air temperatures with vertical-coloured stripes – in December 2020 and again in November and December the following year. But he told the Appeal Court that he was ‘morally obliged to do the honourable thing’ and that his ‘actions were also entirely justified as [he] was using reasonable force to prevent a crime’.
Summarising Mr Wragg’s reasons for the attacks, Commissioner Alan Binnington – who was sitting with Jurats Robert Christensen and Alison Opfermann – said that his principal complaint concerned the use of the words ‘climate emergency’, which he believed were unduly alarmist and capable of having a harmful impact on the mental health of young people.
However, the court rejected his argument.
Upholding both the guilty verdicts and the sentences, Commissioner Binnington said: ‘Furthermore, there was no evidence before the Assistant Magistrate that this particular mural had caused or was likely to cause damage to the mental health of young people who saw it.
‘It was always open to the appellant to make his views on the alleged risk to the mental health of children known directly to the local authorities but, save for the appellant’s suggestion that the police should have taken action against the government campaign following the first painting of graffiti, there was no evidence that he had done so.’
