Last week I watched ‘How To Blow Up A Pipeline’, a movie based on the 2021 non-fiction book by Andreas Malm - ‘How To Blow Up A Pipeline: Learning to fight in a world on fire’. The book sees Malm advocate for climate activism adopting sabotage strategies to engender change.
The film itself was gripping. A disparate group of young people come together determined to blow up an oil pipeline. There is no one leader of the group, each has a role, and the plan has been cleverly thought through, including not allowing the oil to leak.
Over the course of the film we learn more about each of the activists and their reasons for engaging in climate sabotage. Many of those reasons centre around climate justice, or lack thereof, and the stories are both poignant and rage inducing. Just as I thought I knew where the story was going I was proved wrong and was kept on the edge of my seat throughout.
The film raised an important question about the most effective way for activists to bring about change. I was unsure where I sat on this before, during and after the film!
Warriors or Terrorists?
The stories and reason behind each character’s involvement in blowing up the pipeline are reason enough to consider their actions justified rather than terrorism, in my book. As Malm considers in his treatise, we look back in history and conveniently forget the actions that other successful protests involved to achieve change.
Suffragette Outrages!
The women’s suffrage movement is often represented pictorially today by women standing holding placards stating their right to vote (albeit not all women’s right to vote). But while the movement may have begun with the belief that suffrage could be achieved through peaceful protest and democratic pleas to be heard, this strategy was soon replaced by a far more militant one. Window smashing, while one tactic used by the suffragettes, was by no means the height of their militancy. The suffragettes pursued an organised campaign of bombings and arson attacks that became known as the ‘Suffragette Outrages’. (British Library, 2018).
Gandhi’s Satyagraha
Gandhi’s 25 year-long campaign to end British colonial rule in India is often noted for his leadership emphasis on Satyagraha, a form of non-violent protest embodying spiritual thought. Throughout the strikes, protests, boycotts of British institutions and marches, Gandhi was insistent that his followers adhere to non-violent direct action (NVDA) to continue their struggle. Even in the face of the brutal retaliation of the British-Indian regime.
But this is to gloss over the realities of the Indian struggle for Independence, and focus on NVDA as the sole or main reason for the eventual success. While it undoubtedly played a huge part, the fight for Independence frequently involved huge protests and many people responded to the brutality they were met with by the British Raj by retaliating, smashing property and (rightly) defending themselves.
The Civil Rights Movement’s Non-Violent Direct Action
Dr Martin Luther King (Jnr) was heavily influenced by Gandhi’s NVDA and focused on it to fight for civil rights and bring about change during the 1950s and 60s. Quotes are frequently wheeled out that focus on Dr King’s non-violent message and reduce it to the belief that love and compassion would inspire people to change. His actual intent was to bring about social justice as a moral imperative and dismantle systems of oppression. Non-violent action did not mean passivity for Dr King and he expressed a militant commitment to pursuing effective change.
So change, justice and moves towards equality have often involved militancy, sabotage and, at times, violence, whether self-defence or otherwise. So is this the way forward for those demanding climate justice? Is the only way to be heard to engage in a high level of disruption to the capitalist machine?
Attention! Who Is Paying It Matters
The experience of protestors, Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya, might suggest otherwise! In 2017, the pair claimed responsibility for sabotaging construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. They chose to confess because so little media attention had been given to their, and similar, environmental sabotage. Indeed, their activism produced only one article in a major national newspaper. However, it’s not that sabotage doesn’t gain attention. It just not always from the media. Instead it is governments and homeland security that notice these acts and take action to diminish the very right to protest.
The Right To Protest Is Being Wronged
All over the world an aggressive campaign by fossil fuel companies and their government allies are attempting to increase penalties for climate activism in an effort to silence climate justice campaigners. Such protestors are facing a resurgence of the dangerous label, eco-terrorists, for attempting to protect the planet from the ravages of capitalism. Senior Communications specialist at Greenpeace, Rodrigo Estrada pointed out:
“The fact that corporations are trying to frame environmental advocates in that way, it’s just a very clear example of how they’re trying to stigmatize it without addressing the concerns of the movement which are very legitimate. In the end, this is about the protection of communities and the environment.” (Grist, 2019).
The Guardian newspaper has been recording and taking note of the number of climate justice activists who are being murdered for speaking out and taking action worldwide, but especially in the global south.
In light of all this, why do I still feel torn about sabotage becoming the go-to strategy for protestors?
Loss of life is still a concern, things going wrong and mistakes being made. At the end of the film we see protestors readying themselves to blow up a super yacht. I found this uncomfortable viewing, wondering if anyone was in or near it.
But on top of that is the risk of alienation such tactics often have on the public at large. A public not necessarily well-versed in the nuances, full facts or global picture of climate justice (myself included). Hell the level of racism that is still seething just below the surface and doesn’t take much to rear its ugly head is unlikely to make climate justice an issue many even want to understand.
Tipping Points
I like George Monbiot’s insistence of stopping preaching to our adversaries and the importance of a tipping point:
“We *should* preach to the choir, but keep expanding the choir, pushing out the concentric circles until we reach the 25% penetration of a new perspective or a new idea that triggers social tipping. Once you have passed the tipping point (acceptance of the idea by roughly 25% of the population), almost everyone falls into line with the new status quo. People who fiercely opposed marriage equality now claim they always supported it, and they genuinely seem to believe it'“. (Twitter, 2022).
Like Monbiot, I do not think that sabotage is the way to achieve that tipping point (no matter how much I loved the film), rather I think it alienates many people who could likely be allies in Monbiot’s concentric circles. While a degree of sabotage may be inevitable in protest, I don’t think it should ever be its raison d’etre.
Instead, perhaps the uniting of people globally with a shared intersectional agenda is how we best reach a tipping point capable of effecting change. This intersectionality is simply the joining together of all groups who are deliberately disadvantaged or discriminated against under capitalism (most people?!), instead of those groups fighting against the system and its impacts individually.
Having spent some time recently on the outer edges of a UK based organisation fighting for climate justice, I think the intersectional piece is one yet to be fully addressed to unite the many people who are singing from the same or similar song sheets, just often in separate choirs.
Have you seen the film? I’d love to know your thoughts about it and the future of protest more generally.
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You mean like how NATO and/or U.S. empire blew up Nordstream 2 creating one if the biggest releases of greenhouse gasses in human history? I know let’s create a giant oil spill to stop oil spills from happening.
Good plan! Sigh..,