How to Blow up a Pipeline

Paperback, 208 pages

English language

Published Jan. 25, 2020 by Verso Books.

ISBN:
978-1-83976-025-9
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

3 stars (4 reviews)

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 …

1 edition

I'm forced to reflect on my own history of peacebuiding

3 stars

Andreas Malm has a simple thesis - that property violence is both necessary and justified in the struggle to end fossil fuels. Much of the book is spent critiquing Gandhi as well as Chenoweth and Stephan, heroes of my youth and my early peacebuilding career, respectively.

Malm argues that a violent wing to a broader movement is critical for that movement to achieve its objectives - that every Martin needs his Malcolm, etc. And he actively disputes the research and thesis of Chenoweth and Stephan's signature text, "Why Civil Resistance Works". He characterizes insistence on non-violence as the stance of the privileged who will bear the least of the burden as we descend into climate chaos.

As I write this, the U.S. Congress has passed an historic climate bill, investing $369 billion to overhaul our energy and transportation sectors. Through a combination of carrots and regulatory sticks, analysts predict that …

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 …

Excellent at What It Does

4 stars

Firstly, this book is really good at what it sets out to do, mainly explain when and why property destruction can be adopted as a tactic for environmental preservation, and avoiding climate despair. For the most part, I agree with other criticisms of it listed here, namely that the title is misleading as it gives no instructions on practically how to blow up a pipeline, and does neglect care work and support infrastructure in doing revolution. However, I don't think that these are massive strikes against it, as it's not trying to be the What is to be Done of the 21st century. It's merely trying to advocate that property destruction is a legitimate tactic at this point in the climate crisis, and I think it does that well. While it is certainly preferable to abolish the state rather than pressure it into passing anemic climate legislation, these tactics, as …