Of course, most of them won’t give up their own big carbon footprints, won’t stop using fossil fuels, won’t go vegan, or live in tiny homes, and so forth
Can sabotage stop climate change?
Despite the climate movement’s growth, epitomised by Extinction Rebellion and Student Strike for Climate, fossil fuel extraction continues to grow, and a safe climate can seem dismayingly distant. Given a choice between forgoing capital accumulation and tipping the whole world into a furnace, our rulers prefer the furnace.
In How to Blow up a Pipeline, Andreas Malm asks how the climate movement can emerge from the COVID-19 hiatus as a stronger force. In particular, he questions whether the movement’s until now near-universal commitment to non-violent protest is holding it back. “Will absolute non-violence be the only way, forever the sole admissible tactic in the struggle to abolish fossil fuels? Can we be sure that it will suffice against this enemy? Must we tie ourselves to its mast to reach a safer place?â€
To make his point, Malm cites examples of popular historic movements, some of which are invoked by today’s climate campaigners as examples of non-violent change.
The overthrow of Atlantic slavery involved violent slave uprisings and rebellions. The suffragettes of early 20th century Britain regularly engaged in property destruction. The United States civil rights movement was punctuated by urban riots. As part of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, Nelson Mandela co-founded the armed wing of the African National Congress. The Indian National Congress is known for its non-violent tactics, but violence also played a role in the resistance to British rule from the Great Rebellion of 1857 until independence.
Malm absolutely rules out violence that harms people, but he wants the climate movement to include sabotage and property destruction in its plans.
Oh, sure, that harms people now, but, that won’t last, seeing how the “peace loving liberals” love assaulting people, believing it is OK because they are on the right side of history. But, property damage and destruction does hurt people. What of when they cause power to go out and someone dies because their ventilator gets shut off? What if they destroy someone’s business? What if they kill the power for people during a winter storm or during a heat wave?
Malm’s arguments have been met with alarm in some quarters. In a review posted on the Global Ecosocialist Network website Alan Thornett says adopting the book’s proposals would “not only be wrong but disastrous†and anyone who did so would soon have “armed police kicking down their doorâ€. He calls Malm’s argument an impatient “bid for a shortcut†resulting from “frustration compounded by the lack of a socially just exit strategy from fossil energyâ€.
Some others say this is a Bad Idea, but, now that it is out there, you can bet climate cultists are considering it. And will do it. You just had the hack of a pipeline. You had Extinction Rebellion splashing fake blood on buildings and people. And so much more
Malm opposes reckless actions — “controlled political violence†should be regarded a “fine art to be mastered†and “time and timing are of the essenceâ€. Because violent actions could backfire and “make a movement look so distasteful as to deny it all influenceâ€, climate saboteurs must be “especially circumspect and mindful†of the wider cause, as the “negative effects could be unusually ruinousâ€.
He is very critical of the sabotage tactics of groups such as EarthFirst! and the Earth Liberation Front in North America in the 1980s and 1990s. Their acts of “ecotage†produced “no lasting gains†because “they were not performed in a mass movement, but largely in a voidâ€.
And you know that many Warmists are taking this to heart. It’s the inner Antifa in all of them, willing to get violent.
Malm is genuinely committed to advancing the climate movement, making it more radical and hence more effective at dealing with a crisis caused by capitalism, but his call for sabotage and property destruction by a minority is misplaced, despite the many qualifications he includes.
No matter how sincere it is, How to Blow up a Pipeline undermines the more radical strategy of bringing wider layers of people into struggle and helping them to see themselves as key protagonists in this fight for the future.
Surprise! He’s against capitalism. And, sure, the article takes issue with his ideas as bad for this “bringing wider layers of people into the struggle”, but, it really doesn’t say “hey, this is criminal”, does it?
FUNDED no doubt by Communist China. People do not understand how infiltrated we have let our nations(Pluaral as in all of the EU, Australia, Japan, S. Korea etc. etc. Not to mention they are literally colonizing Africa as we speak.)
I cannot stress enough how infiltrated our schools and colleges have become. How we are literally teaching MAOISM instead of American History in Many High Schools and Most Colleges around the country.
Our elite professors of most colleges are so far fuking left as to be card carrying members of the CCP of China.
In the 60’s and 70’s there was a cultural revolution in China in which the nation was purged of its emotional attachment to humanity. This……..IS what is being taught to our children.
If you want any reason as to why the USA and the WEST IS FAILING it is because WE are being taught emotional disentanglement from society. As in our children sit in basements for hours playing VIOLENT video games. OUR movies are controlled by CHINA.
One of my assignments is to watch, analyze and summarize For all Mankind on APPLE TV which is primarily owned and operated by China despite the out appearances. In this TV series it offers a differing timeline in which RUSSIA is first to the moon, women become astronauts, gays are hated as always, American exceptionalism is replaced with turning the moon into a military outpost.
In other words America’s warts are revealed over and over again making the country look like a war mongering, sex addicted, anti-gay bastion of hatred. The message is mixed. The acting is exceptional and the program is good for those who thrive in a woke new world.
Marvels next new super adventure comes to you direct from China with Chinese Actors. Dr. Strange was left off of Wanda Vision because he was TOO……..WHITE.
The Department of education and all of the US government and most Blue state governments are now once again teaching CRITICAL RACE THEORY that teaches YOUR CHILDREN and Americans we are evil, obnoxious, worthless, hateful, spiteful and Racist. There is only one true race. BLACKS and every other race consists of WHITE NATIONALISTS.
Nationalism is EVIL. No push back. No pride in your country, your flag and your city, state, town, community. YOU ARE EVIL. You should be punished.
And you will be. You are being punished and now…..The left is drumming up more reasons to keep us locked down so they can harvest more votes for the 2022 election to finish what they started. The end of America as we know it.
Any stupid person can see it. Anyone looking. Its no conspiracy. It is the truth.
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Our esteemed host quoted:
If a natural gas pipeline is sabotaged, in a way in which no one is injured but the gas flow is cut off, I suppose that would meet Mr Malm’s criterion. But, if the flow of gas is cut off, that will mean that people wouldn’t have it available, to what, heat their homes in January, or have electricity for their workplaces and lose their jobs?
Natural gas is part of our infrastructure, something not a consumer item as much as it is a means of modern life.
48% of all homes in the US use natural gas for heat, while only 37% use electricity. Interestingly, the only region in which electricity is the primary source of heat is the Confederacy, in which winters are normally milder.
It seems that the liberals in New York and New England love them some heating oil! My previous home, in the southern end of the Poconos, used heating oil, and I later supplemented that with a wood stove. Why? It gets cold there, and the wood stove, not only helping in a house with an older, one-zone system, was a back-up in the event of a power outage. (Heating oil furnaces still depend on electricity to run.)
The northeast was also the area of our fastest early population growth, and the densely populated northeast has a lot of older, more poorly insulated homes. What the warmunists don’t understand — well, part of what they don’t understand, because, really, they don’t understand much at all — is that it costs money to retrofit an older home with better insulation, and it costs money to change out existing heating systems for newer ones, and that it costs money to do all of the things they want, and the clerk working at the Turkey Hill in downtown Jim Thorpe or the concrete mixer driver living in Brodheadsville can’t afford to just do those things.
The warmunists all seem to be the people who are already well off, the people who don’t have to worry about putting food on the table, the people for whom day-to-day survival isn’t quite so guaranteed. Not only are they not poor, they don’t seem to have grown up poor, either, and have no flaming idea what things can be like for those who aren’t well off. It’s easy for them to say that these things can just be done, because they can afford them when they come.
[…] good friend William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove noted that some climate activists believe they may have to move away from strictly non-violent means to get the change they want. Andreas […]