On a cloudy day in May last year, two Massachusetts men, Ken Ward and Jay O'Hara, maneuvered their lobster boat in front of a many-times larger ship carrying 40,000 tons of coal to a power plant and blocked it for hours in the name of stopping climate change. In doing so, they committed several crimes, according to local prosecutors, who sought to lock them up for two years. Business as usual.

On Monday, however, Bristol District Attorney Sam Sutter pulled a little stunt: he announced he was dropping the charges, walked outside holding a copy of environmentalist Bill McKibben's "Call to Arms" in Rolling Stone, and said:

The decision that Robert Kidd and I—that’s the assistant district attorney who handled this case—reached today was a decision that certainly took into consideration the cost to the taxpayers in Somerset, but was made with our concern for their children, the children of Bristol County and beyond, in mind. Climate change is one of the gravest crises our planet has ever faced. In my humble opinion, the political leadership on this issue has been gravely lacking.

Around Puget Sound, people have repeatedly obstructed and locked themselves to railroad tracks, and now, indigenous tribes are promising to form an alliance against energy companies who appear intent on turning the Pacific Northwest into a fossil fuel corridor—a shipping route for oil and coal to Asia. We've seen an explosion of oil trains moving through Seattle on railroads, carrying crude oil all the way from North Dakota.

"I hope more prosecutors follow the example set in Massachussetts and start to see the necessity of bold and courageous action to confront the climate crisis," Ahmed Gaya, an organizer with Rising Tide Seattle, tells me by phone from New York, where he's about to attend what's being billed as the biggest march against global warming in history, during the UN's climate summit.

The five people who blocked an oil train in Everett this month spent 27 hours in jail on $2,000 bond before being released, "which is a little ridiculous," Gaya says. They're waiting to see if prosecutors file misdemeanor charges.

Gaya himself has been charged with second degree criminal trespass by Skagit County prosecutors for blocking railroad tracks in Anacortes. His court date is October 27.

So, what does Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes—the city's top prosecutor—think about the fact that Sutter dropped the charges against the boat-blockers? "Interesting question," says spokeswoman Kimberly Mills. "Nobody gets a free pass on prosecution by our office ahead of time, regardless of a prosecutor’s personal beliefs. I’d wager if Mr. Sutter had been asked before the protest if he would or would not bring charges, he wouldn’t have had an answer."

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors must enforce the law, though, right? That's their job. Well, yes. But, they are not able to prosecute every single crime that occurs. They use their discretion. And, "the argument that, because the government believes a man has committed a crime, it must prosecute him is much weaker than it seems," wrote the late legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin in an influential 1968 essay on civil disobedience, when the civil rights movement was near its peak. "Society 'cannot endure' if it tolerates all disobedience; it does not follow, however, nor is there evidence, that it will collapse if it tolerates some."

But there is clear evidence that the entire planet is going radically altered—more drought, more big storms, rising oceans, bird extinctions, and far more impacts than I can list here—by global warming. Ward, the Massachusetts carpenter who won't go to jail for for blocking that coal ship, wrote last year, "The only reasonable action, if we are concerned about a future in which civilization remains possible, is a rapid shift away from fossil fuels and the immediate cessation of coal burning."

Might this week mark a turning point in the history of climate change? Time and global temperatures will tell.