Date of Posting 04/04/2023
This article is a general summary and outline of some of the ideas in the book "How to Blow up a Pipeline", by Andreas Malm, in the year 2021. I enjoyed the book a great deal, and found it to be both insightful and invigorating. I strongly recommend it, but in case you aren't in a position to read it for yourself, a passable summary of some of the key points is below in order to help you pick up on the ideas within the book and use them for yourself.
This book is about the use of sabotage as a form of activism and climate activism, generally arguing that it is a logical next step in the work of preventing (or at least working to limit the scale of) widespread climate collapse. It also definitively stands in opposition to the ideologies of "strategic pacifism" and "climate fatalism", and arguing that the urgency of the climate crisis demands that climate activism escalate beyond simple non-violent forms of protest, which have so far failed to cause the substantive changes required to tackle the vast problems and threat of impending climate collapse.
Conveniently the book is broken up into 3 parts, which make it quite a bit easier to summarise in this format.
Strategic Pacifism can be broadly described as the approach to protest that pacifism is not only morally correct, but the most effective method through which to achieve social change. More detail on the concept itself in it's own article, but the book spends a substantial amount of time debunking this claim, or if not "debunking" as such, demonstrating that its value is severely overestimated by its supporters. Many of the most famous examples of pacifisms and peaceful non-violent protest action which are cited by proponents of Strategic Pacifism turn out to be instances in which either the non-violent protest was followed by other actions which were more effective, was not strong enough a factor in social change to attribute the approach to their success, or was undertaken in parallel with direct action of a more direct and confrontational nature. Several examples of this phenomenon are given throughout global history, to illustrate the false credit that is often given retrospectively to the power of pacifism and non-violence in pushing for social change.
It is clearly articulated that sabotage and property destruction, as tactics of activism and advancement of social change, have a history of being effectively used to achieve the aims of social reformers. Various examples are given, one such being the Suffragettes who smashed windows and even planted bombs in London cafes. The sabotage of pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure is also demonstrated to be surprisingly easy, very difficult to defend against, and incredibly cost effective in terms of the cost of carrying out the action compared to the massive impact on resource extraction. Various arguments are presented against the efficacy of direct action of this sort, and are countered in the text. For example arguments of asymmetry (as in the power imbalance of individual or group action vs the vast resources and machinery of nation states), which we face regardless of anything we do, and is already a known and addressed challenge in the concept of guerilla warfare, in which smaller groups fighting as insurgents are often capable of carrying out covert ops quite effectively. It's absurd to assume that property destruction would be of the same tactical character as a peaceful march for example, the march is extremely easy to counter by the state via their overwhelming power advantage, however states consistently struggle to fight dedicated insurgent movements which do not make themselves visible as these peaceful acts are obliged to. The arguments of popular support and Negative Radical Flank are also proposed, suggesting that climate movements lose support as soon as they escalate beyond peaceful protests and non-violent civil disobedience. However this isn't entirely true, and mostly applies to poorly thought out actions, which XR itself are guilty of and taken to task for in this very chapter.
"Climate Fatalism" is the attitude that climate catastrophe is both inevitable and not worth doing anything to stop. This is typically borne of various attitudes, particularly the approach that there is no hope to stop climate change because it is too complex a problem to solve, but also the idea that people don't have the willpower to stop consuming fossil fuels, or that it is simply too late and we have already doomed ourselves. I would like to be clear that in the following areas neither myself nor Malm are criticising people for feeling hopeless in the face of the scale of the crisis; rather criticising those who advocate a shrugging helplessness and apathy in the face of impending disaster. For me this stinks of privilege, as well as moral and intellectual cowardice, but for Malm he delves further into the issues. Key figures in the Climate Fatalism movement are Roy Scranton and Jonathan Franzen. Neither believe that we can prevent climate catastrophe (a point about which they may be correct) but also that the best approach to this is to instead do nothing and find a way to come to terms with your own doom. Instead of putting in the work to fix the problem, simply refuse to try, and accept the situation as it stands. These are not men at high risk of being killed in a climate related disaster any time soon, for whom their livelihoods and families may be blasted away by a hurricane or drowned in flash floods. They occupy positions of privilege and their own moral torpor signals to them that nobody else has the will or energy to do anything to prevent further disaster. The oft-cited phrase "It is easier to imagine the world than the end of capitalism", the core idea of Capitalist Realism, is extremely clear here. These climate fatalists literally cannot imagine moving beyond capitalism, even if it spells certain doom for all human life. Because it is too difficult to conceive of a world beyond capitalism, beyond rampant extractive industry and fossil fuel dependency, they give up and remain mired in the fatal comfort of the familiar. A deep failure of imagination is at the heart of Climate Fatalism, cloaked in claims of pragmatism and detached wisdom. Beyond this, there is also the concept of "Success Conditions", on whether it's worth fighting battles that cannot be won. If in the event we are doomed, this idea suggests it's better to just sit down and accept fate or to fight for our survival. Surely it is easier to simply give up? Yes, it is easier to give up. But few things worth doing are worth doing so simply because they are easy. Even if we're completely fucked, we should fight anyway. Do not simply lay down and accept annihilation. Have some courage. Even if we can't win (and we can) you should //REDACTED// that pipeline anyway.
This list is partly for myself, but also a collection of what looked to me like some of the more interesting or useful citations throughout the book, which you may also wish to look into.