How to Blow Up a Pipeline - Andreas Malm
Hello!
We are so excited to see you in person (6th September) or virtually at our first book club event in September. The first book we will be reading is
HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE - LEARNING TO FIGHT IN A WORLD ON FIRE BY ANDREAS MALM
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.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS
Warning of imminent ecological catastrophe, the Earth Liberation Front became notorious in the late 1990s for setting fire to symbols of ecological destruction, including timber mills, an S.U.V. dealership and a ski resort. The group was widely demonized. Its exploits were condemned by mainstream environmental groups, ridiculed by the media and inspired a furious crackdown from law enforcement.
But in 2022 the group is more relevant than ever. These days even America’s mainstream environmental movement has begun to take a more confrontational approach, having previously confined its activities largely to rallies, marches and other lawful forms of protest. Even the “staid” environmental groups based in Washington have slowly started to embrace more radical tactics. Climate activists are starting to abandon their dogmatic attachment to pacifism, choosing instead to work toward destroying the “machines” inflicting the damage — but will such a radical idea prove effective?
The journalist Matthew Wolfe delves into the world of the activists, and questions the future of environmental activism.
The SUV is the second largest cause of the global rise in carbon dioxide emissions over the past decade. It’s also the new target of a group that calls itself the Tyre Extinguishers. We followed the group on a searingly hot night in New York as its masked members took to the streets of the Upper East Side to take part in the biggest deflation operation yet in the US.
“The amount of damage from a flat tyre is nothing compared to climate change,” said one member as they moved away from the first deflation. “Why do you need an SUV, especially in New York? It’s a vanity thing. You have freedom of choice, sure, but you don’t have freedom from consequences.”
The Tyre Extinguishers movement started in the UK, spread to a clutch of other countries and has now landed in the US. Since June, dozens of SUV and pickup truck owners in New York, the San Francisco Bay area and Chicago have discovered their vehicles with flat tyres along with a note on the windshield declaring: “Your gas guzzler kills.”
Radical change: just how radical? - Andreas Malm - Economics for Rebels (PODCAST)
“There is no doubt that ecological economics is about inducing radical change in the world. While that is almost never up for debate in these circles, just how radical is radical remains to be a highly divisive issue. Environmentalist movements had been seen in the past rather peaceful and being rebellious as an ecological economist is more about strongly attacking the current order. In theory. But can profound change really happen without blowing up a pipeline?
Today’s guest, Andreas Malm argues that it cannot. Andreas is a climate activist, author, and associate professor of human ecology at Lund University, Sweden. In his work he often argues that those with vested interests in the current world order will not just turn green out of kindness of the heart. Movements that induced radical change in power structures in the past such as feminism or the anti-apartheid rebels only achieved their aims when they turned away from just symbolic moves.
In his latest book, How to blow up a pipeline: Learning to fight in a world on fire he argues that ecological movements remain unsuccessful as they only consider peaceful means to achieve radical change.”
"Why is Fridays For Future failing and what to do about it? Tadzio Müller and Andreas Malm, two of the leading thinkers of the radical climate movement, discuss what's next for the fight against climate disaster in the global north."
"An urgent, freely downloadable ebook that asks: should we start blowing up pipelines, occupying coal mines, and destroying property to address global climate change?
Andreas Malm’s book How to Blow Up a Pipeline, with its call for the environmental movement to start sabotaging fossil fuel infrastructure to save our planet, has sparked a vibrant discussion on the left about “the green state,” direct action and violence, ecological Leninism, and existing pipeline struggles. It has also reignited longstanding fears of eco-sabotage on the right.
Collected here are a set of essays that grapple with the idea of direct action and eco-sabotage, survey climate activism around the world, and argue for the necessity of building a fighting global movement against capitalism and its fossil fuel regime.
Contributors include: Alyssa Battistoni, James Butler, João Camargo, Jen Deerinwater, Ben Ehrenreich, Madeline ffitch, Frente Nacional Anti-Minero (Ecuador), Bue Rübner Hansen, Tara Houska, Jessie Kindig, Benjamin Kunkel, Anabela Lemos and Erika Mendes from Justiça Ambiental! (Mozambique), Andreas Malm, MOTH Collective, Vanessa Nakate and Amy Goodman, Siihasin Hope, Brototi Roy, Andrea Sempértegui, Richard Seymour, and Adam Tooze."
"Halla becomes a determined environmental activists, but this threatens a long-held hope of hers. This film was Iceland's submission too the Foreign Language Film Award of the 91st Academy Awards (2019)"
Violence & Protest | Philosophy Tube (VIDEO)
TANGENTIAL MATERIALS
What is the difference between the suffragists and the suffragettes - The British Library (ARTICLE)
In 1928 all British women over the age of 21 were granted the right to vote in political elections. Women’s suffrage societies – groups who campaigned for the right to vote – began to emerge in Britain in the mid-19th century. Those involved in the first wave of the campaign are known as suffragists. Suffragists believed in peaceful, constitutional campaign methods. In the early 20th century, after the suffragists failed to make significant progress, a new generation of activists emerged. These women became known as the suffragettes, and they were willing to take direct, militant action for the cause.
