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 overthrowing dictators to the movement against
apartheid and for women’s suffrage, Malm argues that the strategic
acceptance of property destruction and violence has been the only
route for revolutionary change. In a braided narrative that moves
from the forests of Germany and the streets of London to the deserts
of Iraq, Malm offers us an incisive discussion of the politics and
ethics of pacifism and violence, democracy and social change,
strategy and tactics, and a movement compelled by both the heart and
the mind. Here is how we fight in a world on fire.