Why resisting climate change means combatting the fossil fuel industry
The science on climate change has been clear for a very long time now. Yet despite decades of appeals, mass street protests, petition campaigns, and peaceful demonstrations, we are still facing a booming fossil fuel industry, rising seas, rising emission levels, and a rising temperature. With the stakes so high, why haven’t we moved beyond peaceful protest?
In this lyrical manifesto, noted climate scholar (and saboteur of SUV tires and coal mines) Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse. We need, he argues, to force fossil fuel extraction to stop—with our actions, with our bodies, and by defusing and destroying its tools. We need, in short, to start blowing up some oil pipelines.
Offering a counter-history of how mass popular change has occurred, from the democratic revolutions …
Why resisting climate change means combatting the fossil fuel industry
The science on climate change has been clear for a very long time now. Yet despite decades of appeals, mass street protests, petition campaigns, and peaceful demonstrations, we are still facing a booming fossil fuel industry, rising seas, rising emission levels, and a rising temperature. With the stakes so high, why haven’t we moved beyond peaceful protest?
In this lyrical manifesto, noted climate scholar (and saboteur of SUV tires and coal mines) Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse. We need, he argues, to force fossil fuel extraction to stop—with our actions, with our bodies, and by defusing and destroying its tools. We need, in short, to start blowing up some oil pipelines.
Offering a counter-history of how mass popular change has occurred, from the democratic revolutions overthrowing dictators to the movement against apartheid and for women’s suffrage, Malm argues that the strategic acceptance of property destruction and violence has been the only route for revolutionary change. In a braided narrative that moves from the forests of Germany and the streets of London to the deserts of Iraq, Malm offers us an incisive discussion of the politics and ethics of pacifism and violence, democracy and social change, strategy and tactics, and a movement compelled by both the heart and the mind. Here is how we fight in a world on fire.
Made me start believing in a positive change… again
4 stars
I went into this book being a bit negative about climate change and the climate movement worldwide. I thought we “lost” and wouldn’t be able prevent enormous damage to the planet. I saw myself in a situation similar to the ending of the movie “Don’t look up” but I don’t think of that anymore.
The book gives you a decent amount of history of the different climate movements (pacifist and not so pacifist) and compales them to other social movements and the type of violence or lack there of that they used in order to achieve their goals.
Energizing, brutally honest, and aggressively hopeful
5 stars
How to Blow Up a Pipeline is probably the most thought-provoking and crucial piece of political philosophy that I’ve read since Social Death by Lisa Marie Cacho.
In three long essays Malm fist dismantles the myths and extremely selective histories told by strategically pacifist climate movements like XR (Extinction Rebellion), then describes specific material actions and practical examples on how to disrupt fossil fuel combustion effectively and towards the end takes climate fatalism to task in a radically hopeful finale.
This book is as important as it is approachable, not at all a dense academic work but a pragmatic guide for the real world.
a book with all the right pieces and some very weird conclusions
2 stars
for a book i should ostensibly agree with on all points i found this deeply dull and fairly insipid. it goes to great lengths to categorize property damage as violence, dedicating only a few paragraphs around page 100 to the "ridiculous" idea that inanimate property maybe can't be subject to violence in the same way that living things can. it then uses this framework of property damage as violence to argue for the necessity of violence in protest, but jumps through incredible hoops to advocate for some sort of violence scale, from damaging luxury vehicles on one side to murder on the other, and is vehement that although the climate movement needs violence to achieve results (it argues against pacifism for almost half the book, albeit it itself is more pacifist than it knows), this can only mean - to malm- damage to fossil fuel infrastructure and luxury goods. it …
for a book i should ostensibly agree with on all points i found this deeply dull and fairly insipid. it goes to great lengths to categorize property damage as violence, dedicating only a few paragraphs around page 100 to the "ridiculous" idea that inanimate property maybe can't be subject to violence in the same way that living things can. it then uses this framework of property damage as violence to argue for the necessity of violence in protest, but jumps through incredible hoops to advocate for some sort of violence scale, from damaging luxury vehicles on one side to murder on the other, and is vehement that although the climate movement needs violence to achieve results (it argues against pacifism for almost half the book, albeit it itself is more pacifist than it knows), this can only mean - to malm- damage to fossil fuel infrastructure and luxury goods. it says; storm the coal plants, destroy fences, let air out of tires. fine. good, even. but a european fantasy of a police state that will not shoot you for doing just that, where the question of what do i do when they try to kill me never rises. this book was written before the blm protests in 2020-21 and fairy creek but after ferguson and standing rock. the author should know what it is to be faced with armed police who will hurt you for destroying infrastructure, for stopping traffic, for daring to protest. painfully naive.
if this were my book, and i were to take this deeply weird view - that property damage is violence at all, but somehow useful violence, unlike all other violence - i would at least include a chapter on how to use an acetylene torch. the best it offers is how to let air out of suv tires.
This is a nice book. The author gives the rundown of climate movements of the past few years, focusing on Ende Gelände, Extinction Rebellion, and Fridays for Future. He's clearly actually been part of a lot of those actions and, as far as I can tell, he gets them pretty right. The tone is hopeful all in all and the central idea – that there should be a more militant flank focused on destruction of fossil fuel emitting devices like SUVs and pipelines – is made well, in particular the clear but charitable case against ideologues of pacifism in activism.
However, and this bugs me deeply, the author does not actually answer the question posed in the title. Nowhere in the book is there any kind of guideline of tactical advice or even finger-point to resources on how to go about this. There is no map of pipelines in Europe, …
This is a nice book. The author gives the rundown of climate movements of the past few years, focusing on Ende Gelände, Extinction Rebellion, and Fridays for Future. He's clearly actually been part of a lot of those actions and, as far as I can tell, he gets them pretty right. The tone is hopeful all in all and the central idea – that there should be a more militant flank focused on destruction of fossil fuel emitting devices like SUVs and pipelines – is made well, in particular the clear but charitable case against ideologues of pacifism in activism.
However, and this bugs me deeply, the author does not actually answer the question posed in the title. Nowhere in the book is there any kind of guideline of tactical advice or even finger-point to resources on how to go about this. There is no map of pipelines in Europe, no overview of IEDs used in attacks, no hint at ecotage manuals the author would find valuable. And even if the author wanted to address merely the best ways of building this radical flank, some advice on how to organize people for the kind of action the author wants to see, like coordinated SUV destruction or regular-enough pipeline attacks to make fossil fuel an investment risks, is sorely missing. The author does talk about the more militant first wave of eco activists around 2000, noting that the hundreds of thousands of acts of property destruction and violence committed by the likes of the ELF did not yield lasting success because they failed to be flanking a larger mass movement, but gives no hands-on advice for how to do better.
I believe this is a missed chance because I'm assuming the book is targeting activists who could become more militant. But it's exactly those activists who are open to militancy that will likely already support this point. When XR was in its infancy, people were actively trying to position it as the radical flank to Fridays for Future, recognizing that XR itself would need such a flank at some point. There is no dearth of people willing to commit property damage and sabotage in the climate movement, but what's holding them back is not the lack of justification but the lack of a plan for how to do so effectively.
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