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Verso Reports
Property Will Cost Us the Earth: Direct Action and the Future of the Global Climate Movement
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.
Moving from Mozambique, the Niger Delta, and the coal mines of India to the forests of Ecuador and the watersheds of North America, Property Will Cost Us the Earth details the global scale of climate devastation as well as active struggles around the world to halt further extraction. From this come tactical and strategic questions: how can local direct actions relate to political work forcing states to end reliance on oil, coal, and gas? What kind of protest movement can we build that reflects the urgency of our moment? What does a direct action–based movement require from those on the frontlines of struggle?
On one thing these essayists are agreed: protecting private property at the expense of our planet and our children’s lives is not a cost we should be willing to pay.
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.
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.
Moving from Mozambique, the Niger Delta, and the coal mines of India to the forests of Ecuador and the watersheds of North America, Property Will Cost Us the Earth details the global scale of climate devastation as well as active struggles around the world to halt further extraction. From this come tactical and strategic questions: how can local direct actions relate to political work forcing states to end reliance on oil, coal, and gas? What kind of protest movement can we build that reflects the urgency of our moment? What does a direct action–based movement require from those on the frontlines of struggle?
On one thing these essayists are agreed: protecting private property at the expense of our planet and our children’s lives is not a cost we should be willing to pay.
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.
256 pages, ebook
First published April 1, 2022
10 people are currently reading
173 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 8, 2022
Incredible book. Well, e-book is the only way you can get it. It is a collection of responses to Andreas Malm's How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which I have not read. Maybe about half the essays in the book really hit for me, but those were from a refreshingly diverse perspective. It made me feel like an insider in movement conversations--something that's been absent from my life since I stopped being an organizer. I love that Verso press included so many essays that contradict each other rather than all try to hold a line ala DSA/Jacobin/whatever.
The best essay, IMO, was "A Frontline Response to Andreas Malm" by Madeline ffitch. Earth First arguments are usually packed full of subcultural sneer and bravado, but this one wasn't. In the broader conversations about The Climate Justice Movement, she asks: are people on the front lines of devastation supposed to wait on the Climate Movement to deem violent tactics palatable?
There were other provocative essays, and almost half of them I skimmed or skipped. The whole first section of the book is from international struggles and it didn't feel in-conversation nor revealing of what's going on in global environmental movements. Instead they came across as polemics on why we should care what's happening in Mozambique, Equator, etc. But like, I'm on board, so what can we learn about what your movements have dealt with tactically and internally?
A key argument of the book and Blow Up a Pipeline is that climate terrorism may be inevitable as the planet heats up. See Kim Stanley-Robinson's Ministry of the Future. That direct action now could yield more results than death in terroristic climate retaliation down the road, as the gains to be won diminish every year.
There is something strange about these arguments though, much like Ward Churchill's Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America or Peter Gelderoos How Nonviolence Protects the State. Non-violent direct action is a tactic, but non-violence as a movement is inherently spiritual. There is something its adherents are trying to protect in themselves and the world. Trying to argue against strict non-violence on its own spiritual & moral grounds is abstract and not going to win a lot of hearts and minds. The more practical approach is to argue for specific tactics in a time and place. As Malm points out in one of his reply-essays, the burning of the 3rd precinct police station in Minneapolis following George Floyd's murder. This was a direct attack on the forces causing the problem and garnered far more sympathy than attacks on peripheral targets. Hypothetical internet arguments in advance probably wouldn't have changed the scenario or response. Of course, there's another thread in this book that asks: should popular opinion always be the top priority when that same opinion has so often failed to translate into any kind of real power?
There's another thread in the book, also popular on the left, that says X people should lead the movement. One piece argues it is disabled front-line native Americans. I don't think it's a bad idea but I do think the abstraction doesn't get us far. Movements need many leaders from many places. Yes there should be a voice for everyone and a greatly disproportionate voice for those who have greater vision, which I think is what we're often really saying when we argue this way. Native cultures are earth-centric and that ideological leadership will take us a lot further than frontline anti-pipeline NIMBY landowners. But only categorically, because at the end of the say it's about which disabled frontline native Americans. We need strong leaders and we need many leaders. We need the rural NIMBY anti-pipeliners and leaders who can both hold vision and organize them persuasively. No one leader or one category of person can be all things that are needed all at once. I'm using "leader" here as short=hand, not meaning who will be the next Mao or Lenin, but is willing to take confident leaps and inspire others with a sense of purpose and direction.
I'm open and ready to be persuaded by differing visions and leaders. That's what's so great about this book.
The best essay, IMO, was "A Frontline Response to Andreas Malm" by Madeline ffitch. Earth First arguments are usually packed full of subcultural sneer and bravado, but this one wasn't. In the broader conversations about The Climate Justice Movement, she asks: are people on the front lines of devastation supposed to wait on the Climate Movement to deem violent tactics palatable?
There were other provocative essays, and almost half of them I skimmed or skipped. The whole first section of the book is from international struggles and it didn't feel in-conversation nor revealing of what's going on in global environmental movements. Instead they came across as polemics on why we should care what's happening in Mozambique, Equator, etc. But like, I'm on board, so what can we learn about what your movements have dealt with tactically and internally?
A key argument of the book and Blow Up a Pipeline is that climate terrorism may be inevitable as the planet heats up. See Kim Stanley-Robinson's Ministry of the Future. That direct action now could yield more results than death in terroristic climate retaliation down the road, as the gains to be won diminish every year.
There is something strange about these arguments though, much like Ward Churchill's Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America or Peter Gelderoos How Nonviolence Protects the State. Non-violent direct action is a tactic, but non-violence as a movement is inherently spiritual. There is something its adherents are trying to protect in themselves and the world. Trying to argue against strict non-violence on its own spiritual & moral grounds is abstract and not going to win a lot of hearts and minds. The more practical approach is to argue for specific tactics in a time and place. As Malm points out in one of his reply-essays, the burning of the 3rd precinct police station in Minneapolis following George Floyd's murder. This was a direct attack on the forces causing the problem and garnered far more sympathy than attacks on peripheral targets. Hypothetical internet arguments in advance probably wouldn't have changed the scenario or response. Of course, there's another thread in this book that asks: should popular opinion always be the top priority when that same opinion has so often failed to translate into any kind of real power?
There's another thread in the book, also popular on the left, that says X people should lead the movement. One piece argues it is disabled front-line native Americans. I don't think it's a bad idea but I do think the abstraction doesn't get us far. Movements need many leaders from many places. Yes there should be a voice for everyone and a greatly disproportionate voice for those who have greater vision, which I think is what we're often really saying when we argue this way. Native cultures are earth-centric and that ideological leadership will take us a lot further than frontline anti-pipeline NIMBY landowners. But only categorically, because at the end of the say it's about which disabled frontline native Americans. We need strong leaders and we need many leaders. We need the rural NIMBY anti-pipeliners and leaders who can both hold vision and organize them persuasively. No one leader or one category of person can be all things that are needed all at once. I'm using "leader" here as short=hand, not meaning who will be the next Mao or Lenin, but is willing to take confident leaps and inspire others with a sense of purpose and direction.
I'm open and ready to be persuaded by differing visions and leaders. That's what's so great about this book.
December 29, 2022
Хороший обзор полемики вокруг экосаботажа, объясняющий, почему теоретики, с одной стороны, и активисты прямого действия - с другой, не станут друзьями (и касается это, конечно, не только противостояния глобальной газонефтянке).
May 10, 2022
Finally, the Verso team is showing its true face: as with the World Economic Forum, Pfizer, Amazon, Google, Apple, they join the chant: you will own nothing, and you WILL be happy.
May 14, 2022
This book is a compendium of critiques of works by Andreas Malm, Swedish eco-activist and left thinker, written by various individuals involved with climate activism. The main theme involves whether or not the movement to stop the use of fossil fuels should or should not resort to violent means. The most interesting parts of this anthology involve real examples of climate activism, and the serious fact that no state on Earth permits the destruction of property with impunity. The annoying bits of obtuse and archaic theory, like, of so-called "war-communism" are irrelevant, unintelligible and distracting from the real problem --how to stop fossil fuel use and extraction. In the end, one realizes that most of these activists, with two or three exceptions, have no frontline experience of real climate action, but rather, feel more comfortable -- as does Malms himself -- in a library archive, diligently researching data to tell stories and develop theories. Well, theory is no longer useful. Action is necessary, and somewhere along the way, the theme of "how to take action" is submerged by all the fashionable lingo and names one must learn to drop in order to participate in a conversation with theoretical activist types. Hmmmm. I expect more than just talk from intelligent people like these. Perhaps a program of action might be elucidated, instead? Of course, then everyone will go to jail, since, as the authors point out, the state remains a servant of private property and big money...
September 10, 2022
It's a free ebook on of my favourite books of the last years. What's not to like? It spurred my imagination and activated me a bit again. The quality of the essays varies quite a lot. The kaleidoscope of catastrophe was my favourite one, as it attempts to disentangle Malm's theoretical pinnings and critically adds to it. Some other essays felt a bit more as if they were added out of obligation to cover all the topics, like the interview in the global struggle for indigenous liberation that does not refer to Malm's book at all, I would've really been interested if this person would've been interviewed specifically on the Malm's book and it should be quite easy to set that up. Ah well. Well worth a read and I'm really happy that 'how to blow up a pipeline' caused a proper debate within the wider climate movement.
January 13, 2023
An important companion piece to How to Blow Up a Pipeline. A wide array of opinions and thoughts which, when read with How to Blow Up a Pipeline present a well rounded and comprehensive view of climate disobedience and the present climate movement
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews