Fortunately for me, this is not a guidebook. Owning a copy of The Anarchist’s Cookbook is illegal in my country, and it seems like a how-to guide on domestic terrorism would be still harder to excuse in court on the grounds of curiosity, as people have tried to do in the past. But How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire is no less explosive for this. Written by a lecturer at Lund University, this is a polemical work that argues that acts of violence against property need to become part of any movement against anthropogenic (human origin) greenhouse gas emissions for that movement to have a chance of real success. It is hostile both towards groups like Extinction Rebellion, whose handbook I read earlier this summer and found fairly uninteresting, and also towards those “climate pessimists” who believe that no significant action to reduce emissions is possible and that instead, we should just learn how to die.
Aside from what goes on in the post-Soviet space, the state of the climate is the global problem I expend most of my thoughts on and know the most about. By the time this post is up, I will have started a new job in a major international energy company, where I will be working specifically on strategic direction within the energy transition – think things beyond just wind and solar. This was also what I was doing in Russia before circumstances compelled me to leave. Though I have neither attended energy-related rallies nor committed domestic terrorism against fossil fuel infrastructure, still I have allowed my concern for the state of the planet and its inhabitants to shape in no small way the direction of my own life. And that concern is great. Believe me, I’d much rather be reading 19th-century novels for the rest of my life in peace.
I found Malm’s book compelling. With The Extinction Rebellion Handbook, I spent most of my time shaking my head. That book was less a series of arguments than a series of paeans to vegan soup kitchens and letting oneself get arrested. Naturally, Malm does not attempt to convince anyone of the consequences of continued large-scale fossil emissions. Readers who want to know more about these should look to the IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers. Those with spurious arguments about why climate change is a hoax, or why human involvement is insignificant next to natural climate change, make me sad and should read no further.
Malm’s book, anyway, is about the tactics necessary for the climate movement to achieve its goals. These being, broadly stated, the prevention of global temperatures rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels or at the most 2 degrees, which is achieved primarily by reducing fossil fuel use or eliminating it altogether. Though these are somewhat arbitrary numbers, if achieved they would minimise the adverse effects of climate change – things like wildfires and crop failures due to increased random weather. Based on current trajectories, however, it is unlikely that we will manage this. Hence the note of hysteria we may hear in climate activists. Emissions are cumulative, so every year from now climate anomalies are only going to get more pronounced – from atypical heatwaves to forest fires – after accounting for other factors, such as the El Nino effect. Hysteria may be justified, in other words. I would say it is, myself.
Why Violence is (supposedly) Necessary
Malm begins his book by describing the experience of protesting with the same joy as some of the writers in the Extinction Rebellion Handbook, but his comment that “we are still perfectly, immaculately peaceful” soon turns out to be ironic. Rather than boasting with the kind of smarmy superiority we may associate with climate activists, Malm is exasperated by this peacefulness. It is bizarre, he notes, that climate change has not prompted more action than just marches and strikes, given:
- How much is at stake;
- The multitude of available targets (Malm considers some consumers responsible enough to be targeted, such as SUV and yacht owners);
- The ease of damaging these targets. (Even a pipeline is easy to damage, while cars can be disabled still more easily);
- The awareness of the crisis and its structure is great. (Mostly we know who is to blame, what the problem is, and so on);
- The enormity of the injustice. (Especially if you consider arguments about, for example, intergenerational injustice to be sufficiently watertight).
One reason for this peacefulness lies within the influence of nonviolence upon the major groups like Extinction Rebellion. Theoreticians, such as Bill McKibben (whom Malm singles out for criticism), combine their environmentalism with certain ideas coming from Buddhism that abhor violence in all forms. They also argue that any violence, even only against inanimate objects, would turn people away from the movement and thus make it less likely to succeed. Finally, they note that major popular movements succeeded using nonviolent methods, such as the fight to end Apartheid in South Africa, the end of slavery, the campaign to give women the vote in the UK, and the US civil rights movement.
Malm finds these arguments absurd. He notes that rarely were these struggles as peaceful as the environmentalists may suggest. The suffragettes were arsonists, with Pankhurst saying “to be militant in some form, or other, is a moral obligation”. Slavery in the United States was ended in part due to a Civil War, and there were slave uprisings, notably in Haiti, as well. As for Apartheid, sabotage was a key method employed by Nelson Mandela when it became clear that peaceful protest would be insufficient. Malm concludes, on the contrary, that violence – but not murder – is practically a necessity to achieve revolutionary goals. Whether it does this by forcing the ruling powers to submit directly to the saboteurs’ demands, or by legitimising a non-violent alternative (as was the case in Malm’s reading of the US Civil Rights movement, where Malcolm X’s violent radicalism legitimised MLK’s more peaceful approach in the eyes of the US government), destruction is necessary.
The practical benefit of attacking property is that it makes ruling more challenging for the incumbent powers. Even if they just have to invest in more security, it is still a cost. And when it becomes sufficiently great, the alternative will become attractive. As one protest group noted, “we are the investment risk”.
Other than this core of nonviolence in the movement’s philosophy, Malm also blames a lack of politicisation among the population, who may care but don’t care enough, and a decline in revolutionary attitudes in general. He also notes that in Europe at least, violence is considered the domain of the far right. For climate activists, who tend to be on the left, violence is thus tainted.
In any case, Malm concludes that people are unwilling to turn to violence, and this is a great weakness of the climate movement. Without a radical flank blowing things up, politicians can simply continue to ignore their voters, and the rich can continue to live outrageously wastefully. Malm’s source for this idea is Herbert Haines’s view of the “radical flank” required by each movement, where both moderates and radicals play their own roles. Without the moderates, the movement will be too radical to attract popular support and thus avoid a crackdown; without radicals, the popular support will be easy to dismiss. Malm is not asking the lawyers at Extinction Rebellion protests to don ski masks and blow things up, but he argues that the climate movement does need some people who will do this.
So, How to Actually Blow Up a Pipeline?
Having established the logical foundations for a radical flank that destroys property but not life, the second part of How to Blow Up a Pipeline concerns if not the details, then at least the realities of this kind of action. He quotes, amusingly enough, from the Pipeline and Gas Journal in 2005, which contained the comment that “Pipelines are very easily sabotaged. A simple explosive device can put a critical section of the pipeline out of operation for weeks.” This was in connection with the Allied occupation of Iraq. Malm notes that damage to energy infrastructure has been widespread throughout history, going back as far as the Luddites. More recently, there was Iraq, there were the MEND militants in the Niger Delta who at one point shut down a third of Nigeria’s oil production, and there have been militants in Yemen who attacked Saudi production using drones.
Due to the scale of the infrastructure, which often crosses entire countries or else occupies a great area (such as oil refineries), defending it is a challenge. In places like Siberia and Canada pipelines are often above the surface due to risks associated with the permafrost thawing, making them easier to access. Malm notes that especially in an age of drones we now have “asymmetric warfare”, with rebels using cheap handheld planes to potentially disable the pillars of the global energy system. Besides such infrastructure, Malm also advocates for the damaging of items associated with conspicuous energy consumption, such as unnecessary SUVs. This is easier for those based in urban areas. Malm himself was part of a group in Sweden called the Indians of the Concrete Jungle, which damaged SUVs for a period of a few years before petering out. Something similar is going on right now in Cornwall.
Although energy infrastructure has been damaged in the past, the reasons have rarely been related to climate, Malm notes. The Iraqis wanted an end to the occupation of their land, as the Palestinians did when they damaged British pipelines in the 1930s, while the MEND rebels in the Niger Delta were concerned about (among other things) pollution, rather than climate change. Malm only has one recent example of climate terrorism, and that was the spate of attacks upon the Dakota Access Pipeline carried out by two women, Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya, with blowtorches and other tools in 2016-17. The two women turned themselves in to gain publicity and to inspire others, though so far they seemed to have surrendered in vain.
Some Minor Criticisms
In general, Malm’s proposal about the need for a radical flank makes sense to me, though I have no interest in blowing anything up and cannot say that I would support such action in practice. This is in part because there are a few reservations at my end that Malm does not address adequately. These are energy-related, rather than based on critical theory. However, there appear some seemingly decent criticisms from that angle on Goodreads for those interested in such an angle.
Firstly, it’s worth mentioning that pipelines are relatively poor targets for energy terrorism. When they are taken out of action or their building is stopped, the alternatives are generally worse for the environment and climate. For example, when the Indian reservation that the planned Yellowstone Pipeline was going to run through declared its refusal to the project, the pipeline was replaced by rail transportation through their land instead. What may have seemed a victory at the time to the Indians, is more of a defeat when we consider that on a per-mile basis, pipelines are the safest way of transporting oil and gas, both for the environment in terms of leaks and associated emissions, and for human health. Instead, it makes more sense for activists to damage production facilities, where their actions would directly prevent oil and gas from leaving the ground.
It’s also worth being discerning about which facilities to attack. I cannot agree with a view that says we must get our emissions down to net zero within an extremely tight timeline (2050 is hard but fine, while 2030 is unreasonable), because I find within a utilitarian framework this of dubious value. I would much prefer, then, that activists prioritise those emissions sources that are essentially unnecessary or particularly harmful, rather than all of them. In practice, this would be new oil and gas production facilities, and those which are particularly poor for the environment, such as Canadian oil sands, deepwater rigs, or gas from hydraulic fracking. Saudi and Norwegian oil, by contrast, has a very low carbon footprint (for different reasons in each case, however), and should avoid damage. One cannot forcefully nudge players to improve quickly if one appears to be attacking all players indiscriminately. A certain amount of discretion also undermines the charge that activists are asking for too much. Malm does want to achieve brilliant goals, but the radical flank should not seem so radical that the moderates can no longer agree with it from a distance. If that becomes the case, then the movement risks collapse.
Malm also shares with other activists the relatively niche view among the wider population that poorer countries should not be allowed to build new fossil fuel facilities to spur their economic growth. I do not know enough to make an argument on this, but there are some obvious flaws in Malm’s own view. He writes that “what they need is not emissions but energy”, which is certainly true. However, he makes the mistake of repeating that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels as if this were true in these cases, when it is much more true for developed countries.
For cash-strapped developing countries, renewables are regularly more expensive and, for other reasons besides, less desirable than fossil infrastructure. The price difference is partly because country risk increases financing costs, partly also because many countries have local content requirements that drive up the costs of individual components. Investments in renewables also produce fewer jobs their fossil fuel alternatives, and intermittency of generation is a problem for countries that may not have sufficient backup generation to account for this, which in reality further drives up costs above what we call the “levelised cost of electricity”. The point, put simply, is that there are good reasons for developing countries to continue to build fossil fuel infrastructure instead of renewables. We may not like those reasons, but they are certainly real.
My purpose with these criticisms is to add a certain amount of nuance to Malm’s argument in How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which on the whole I find reasonable enough. I am not going to any protests, nor am I going to blow up any pipelines. But I consider the current pace of change to be insufficiently fast, and Malm’s argument about the need for some radical violent flank may be one way of resolving the problem, though who knows whether it is the best way. Certainly, it seems a more serious proposal for reducing climate-related damages than that put forward in another climate book I read this year, Assaad Razzouk’s Saving the Climate Without the Bullshit, whose ultimate argument seemed to be that we should just regulate things better.
In general, I remain pessimistic about humanity’s chances of improving the situation before too much damage is done. Humans are very ingenious, but here are demonstrating themselves slow to react, slow to fear. What is frustrating, as someone interested in the area of climate and energy, is that we do, pretty much, have all the solutions we need already. (Bill Gates’s book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is a good layperson’s introduction to some of the technologies we have and the variety of challenges they face). We just do not have the will, nor yet the market incentives to implement these solutions.
Activists, bringing climate to the forefront of the popular consciousness, do a good thing by increasing the pressure on governments. But clearly the threat of damages, of pipeline explosions and burning production facilities, would have a still greater impact. And so, once their more extreme demands are moderated, I find it hard to suggest that the climate movement is not asking for the right things.