Yves here. I am sorry for the lack of original posts today and hope you find the cross post offerings to be sufficiently meaty. My internet was down most of yesterday but was up by evening. However, I spent that on catch up and prep for the Roundtable with Gonzalo Lira, only to have the internet go down again (thunderstorms!) during it once and then seriously before the end. It’s a big of synchronicity that this piece discusses climate change related sabotage as “breaking things”. Perhaps I’ve missed it, but there seems to be less of this sort of thing in the US than UK….or else the press is refusing to report it out of the belief that PR would encourage others.
By Jack McGovan, a freelance writer based in Berlin. His main interests centre on sustainability, covering a range of scientific, social and political topics. Originally published at openDemocracy
UK climate activist group Pipe Busters first broke into the construction site for the Southampton to London Pipeline (SLP) in June. Using an array of carefully selected tools, from bolt cutters to a circular saw, they damaged several sections of uninstalled pipeline and a construction vehicle.
This wasn’t a random act: the pipeline’s main function is to supply Heathrow with aviation fuel.
“Aviation is a planet killer,” said Pipe Busters in an emailed statement. “Pipe Busters act to halt the expansion of flying that the SLP would make possible.”
In a year in which heat records were smashed across the globe, a new wave of climate activists seems to have simultaneously begun its own campaign of breaking things. During the summer, Just Stop Oil activists destroyed several petrol pumps on the M25, while This Is Not a Drill smeared black paint on buildings and smashed the windows of organisations linked to fossil fuels.
The disruption has continued into the autumn. Last week, Just Stop Oil threw black paint on Altcourse prison in Liverpool, in protest at one of their number being held in custody. On Monday, This Is Not a Drill’s website reported that campaigners had broken the front windows of the Schlumberger Cambridge Research Centre at Cambridge University, to draw attention to the recent disastrous flooding in Pakistan.
Outside the UK, the French arm of Extinction Rebellion made the news forfilling golf course holes with cement. Another group, the Tyre Extinguishers, have started a crusade against SUVs in urban environments across a number of countries by deflating their tyres.
Not that long ago, climate activism made the headlines for school children skipping class to protest, so these more radical tactics seem to mark a turning point.
Losing Patience
“I’ve tried all the conventional main means of creating change – I’ve had meetings with my MP, I’ve signed petitions, I’ve participated in public consultations, I’ve organised and taken part in marches,” says Indigo Rumbelow, a Just Stop Oil activist. “The conventional ways of making change are done.”
Marion Walker, spokesperson for the Tyre Extinguishers, added: “We want to live in towns and cities with clean air and safe streets. Politely asking and protesting for these things has failed.
“The only thing we can do is make it impossible or extremely inconvenient to own [an SUV].”
The need for urgent action on the climate is not in doubt. These campaigners are frustrated by what they see as a lack of meaningful steps taken by governments to stem the flow of carbon into the atmosphere. Despite the need to move away from fossil fuels, for instance, the UK government recently opened up a new licensing round for North Sea oil and gas.
The conventional ways of making change are done
Andreas Malm, associate professor in human ecology at Lund University in Sweden, made the case for sabotage as a legitimate form of climate activism in his provocative 2021 book ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ – and he seems to have inspired others to follow his lead. Deflating SUV tyres, for example, is something Malm writes about and says he has done in the past.
But is breaking stuff – temporarily or otherwise – really an effective form of action for a movement trying to communicate on such a serious issue?
“Coordinated, sustained social movements that do destroy property tend to be pretty effective over the long term,” says Benjamin Sovacool, professor in energy policy at Sussex University.
Sovacool highlights three global movements – the abolition of slavery, the prohibition of alcohol and the civil rights movement – that used violence, including destroying property, to achieve their goals.
“Some work in sociology even suggests that violent social movements are actually more effective than non-violent ones,” he adds.
In his own paper, Sovacool cites research from the late 20th century that looked into US social movements, and found that American activists in the 1980s who were willing to use violence were able to reach their objectives more quickly than those who weren’t. He goes on to describe a number of actions that could fall under the umbrella of violence, from destroying property through to assassinations and bombings.
Others refer to property destruction as “unarmed violence”, and research suggests movements that adopt this specific style of violent tactic are more successful than others. Movements highlighted as having used unarmed violence include the Chuquisaca Revolution in 1809, and the overthrowing of the military dictatorship in Argentina in 1983.
But there isn’t a consensus. Other research looking at similar kinds of movements comes to a different conclusion, indicating that violent tactics are less successful in specific cases, such as those seeking regime change.
For any kind of action to have an impact, though, it has to be noticed.
German climate movement Letzte Generation, part of the international A22 network that includes Just Stop Oil, sabotaged a number of fuel pipelines across Germany this spring – more than 30 times in total, the group claims.
“We asked ourselves, what can we do to really put pressure on the government to give us a reaction towards our demands?” says Lars Werner, who was involved in the action. “We did it publicly – it wasn’t an action that we wanted to hide from.”
But despite their enormous logistical efforts, the media coverage was underwhelming. The corporations targeted didn’t react publicly, either. “The government could ignore what we were doing because there wasn’t much attention,” says Werner. Following the action, the group reverted to its old tactics of blocking roads.
Accountability or Anonymity?
Indigo Rumbelow is keen to highlight the importance of accountability – showing names and faces – to Just Stop Oil’s activism. Other groups, such as the Tyre Extinguishers, prefer to remain anonymous.
“We’re trying to change the narrative around fossil fuels,” says Rumbelow. “We’re not trying to materially stop fossil fuels – we don’t have enough people, resources or power for that.
“But by having our face attached to the action and being able to explain, ‘I did this and I believe that I am right because it’s the only right thing to do’ – that’s how we’re going to change the political story,” she says.
Choosing to remain anonymous, and not being accountable for your actions, can also be risky.
“If you put a mask on, there’s the danger of labelling those people in masks as terrorists,” says Laurence Delina, assistant professor in environment and sustainability at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He adds that this can be taken advantage of by others, such as fossil fuel interests, to demonise activists and undermine their message.
Indigenous Communities
Those on the frontlines of resource extraction, however, don’t have the privilege of being able to decide whether they want to be accountable or not. Many Indigenous communities – such as the Wet’suwet’en, Pacheedaht, Ditidaht, Mapuche and Sioux peoples across the American continent – have used their bodies to obstruct pipelines, as well as logging and mining vehicles, that would otherwise destroy their lands. Some have resorted to arson to protect their way of life.
Not only do these communities have fewer options; retaliation is usually more severe too, sometimes deadly. A Guardian investigation revealed in 2019 that Canadian police had discussed using lethal force against Wet’suwet’en activists blocking the construction of a gas pipeline. Last year, Global Witness reported that 277 land and environmental activists were murdered in 2020 for defending their land and the planet. Most of these incidents occurred in the Global South.
Despite differences in opinion, there is a consensus among Malm, Walker and Rumbelow that sabotage, if used, would be most successful as part of a broader movement – that it is one tool in a wider arsenal, not the answer in itself.
Delina thinks that sabotage is a legitimate tactic, but only in situations where all other avenues of action have been explored, emphasising that he thinks non-violent actions are preferable.
Sovacool doesn’t advocate for sabotage, but agrees that a multiplicity of tactics is useful, and that it’s important for us to be able to talk about how successful sabotage has been in the past. “I think each person has to decide on their own threshold for action,” he says.
It may not be effective in the long run, but it certainly will be cathartic for those partaking.
When a lot of moderate people make reasonable arguments, and go unheard, it’s no surprise that extremism is born. What extremism does is not to solve the problem through violence, but to force the establishment to actually pay attention to (and hopefully act upon) the reasonable arguments that moderates were pushing for so long.
MLK does not succeed without Malcolm X and the Black Panthers scaring the white moderates and the establishment to support him instead. Gandhi does not succeed without indian radicals murdering british governors and the many people who died in previous rebellions. The state already intensely surveills and frequently raids completely nonviolent environmental orgs, so anyone commenting about crackdown being intensified doesn’t understand we are living in a crackdown already.
Commenters are correct that it needs to be used with clear separation of orgs, with well chosen and well planned targets, and that groups like XR do not understand how and why they are doing what they’re doing. The target should not be infrastructure alone though, and the rich/corporations will only be scared when they fear for their own physical safety. They are rich enough to replace anything except themselves.
To anyone who advocates solely nonviolence, note that no one who advocates violence advocates solely violence. It is only you who seek a monopoly on tactics and strategy, claim the moral high-ground, and try to control others. And very likely you are privileged to be able to do so. There is a reason MLK is celebrated even by the state; for he was the compromise. And most people who celebrate him are whitewashing his socialism and the fact that even his movement was not totally non-violent by many strict definitions advocated today. There is a good reason we have no Malcolm X Day, nor does a positive mention of him leave anyone’s lips that is in a position of real power.
For historical and moral analysis I highly recommend you read the short book by American Indian Movement activist Ward Churchill (with foreword by Derrick Jensen of Deep Green Resistance fame)
https://www.amazon.com/Pacifism-Pathology-Reflections-Struggle-America/dp/1904859186
or this short pamphlet
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state
or this more detailed analysis:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-the-failure-of-nonviolence
Any climate solution which doesn’t first take care of affected workers (job guarantee?) is suspect.
In my thinking ecovandalism (and it’s little brother, ecohindrance) requires a strong political program that can offered as an alternative to itself and can entice people to participate in the political action.
Without such an alternative, without an actual political platform, pure physical action will mostly turn even semi-empathetic people away. And when prolonged, maybe even make it more difficult to talk seriously about ecological emergency without being labeled as an ecovandalist and being marginalized.
Yes, it is important to consider these actions carefully. The environmental activist and writer Derrick Jensen has written a lot about nonviolence vs. violence and aboveground political vs. underground vandalism or violent action. Many others have too, of course, over centuries probably. I have barely scratched the surface in my own reading. Jensen says both are necessary, and that the respective activists of each type must be separate from one another. There is quite a bit about the concepts in his two-volume Endgame and it is also discussed quite a bit in Bright Green Lies, written with co-authors Lierre Keith and Max Wilbert.
To make an effective movement, you need to get the majority of people on your side. And doing stuff like gluing yourself to works of art of disrupting people trying to get to work is not going to work. It has the total opposite effect in fact. And the people that I see doing this sort of stuff as often as not have this self-entitled attitude about the whole thing. You know how they say that if you have a group of political activists, that the first person to come up with a gun is actually the FBI agent? I have begun to wonder if you have a group of climate activist, whether the first person to bring a tube of glue may be an agent as well. In short, it comes down to this – these activists can either attack & sabotage people who have no power or they can go after people with actual power that can be influenced. And until they start to do the later, I think that people like these protestors will end up in political oblivion with nothing to mark their protests.
You may be thinking in terms of politics as conditioned by business cycles, or Kondratieff waves. As forecast, cumulative climate change effects don’t conform to those graphs.
More like they’re going to turn off somebody’s refrigerator then look crazy when people come directly to their house and take their food.
That’s a nicer hypothetical situation about how wild it could get.
And, as you mentioned, those in power would still not be influenced.
I want to re-affirm your point… excellent analysis
‘ In short, it comes down to this – these activists can either attack & sabotage people who have no power or they can go after people with actual power that can be influenced. And until they start to do the later, I think that people like these protestors will end up in political oblivion with nothing to mark their protests.’
This has been too often ignored by many protests… they only inconvenience the common people by blocking roads, angering the 99%, instead of directly inconvenicing and confronting the people the who actually have power.
I think these type of protests can be useful, but they must take care to never physically hurt anyone; and ideally only target the comfort and sense of security of complacency of the top 2% and their captains. Even damaging company assets does have a negative blowback, as there are many ordinary workers who may lose needed working hours; hence they become opposed to your protests.
The ends never justify means; for the means May damage the ends that you seek to achieve. Multistage holder analysis is applicable, as well as more targeted actions…. Maybe staging a quiet non-violent protest (and it must be non-violent lest we create martyrs for the other side) outside some VIP house might be useful….
Damaging “company assets” can result in blowback from more than just workers. If activists sabotage equipment that is currently in use, then they can inadvertently trigger real energy shortages that cause real suffering for wide swaths of people. [Just look at how Germany is coping with the Nord Stream sabotage.] It’s also dangerous as hell, as energy infrastructure is almost by definition composed of “high-energy” systems. Failures induced by sabotage can be quite violent, with explosions and large fires being the primary hazards.
I’m having great difficult thinking of an act of sabotage that would genuinely useful, as opposed to pointlessly symbolic or highly disruptive (and possibly dangerous) to a lot of ordinary people. I believe the answer to the headline question, “Is Breaking Things the Best Way Forward for Climate Activists?“, is NO.
They should have moved the paintings, but left the protestors attached to the wall where they had glued themselves. An explanatory panel “Idiots, 2022” could be attached nearby. And then everyone could look at them but neither approach nor help them. Only a day or two later should anyone have bothered to help them unglue themselves. They presumed that our society is sufficiently civilized to help them, yet attacked a part of our civilization. That is hypocritical.
As to fixing the problem, it would be much more helpful if they studied something that could help (e.g. nuclear fusion) and dedicated their lives to providing a solution rather than trying to force others to do what they want by screaming self-righteously, attacking our culture, etc. If they did the work, they’d discover that we still need fossil fuels to build fusion plants, and feed half the planet. We’ll need fusion to get out of the pickle we’ve gotten ourselves into: we’ll need to recapture CO2, and that takes energy.
Clearly these activists are working for Russia, as these 2019 articles point out. (And THEY are surely responsible for the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines too!)
Without Fracking For Natural Gas, The U.S. Loses And Putin Wins
https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2019/07/19/without-fracking-for-natural-gas-the-u-s-loses-and-putin-wins/
Moscow secretly funded US anti-fracking groups. Is it now attacking US energy companies?
https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/moscow-secretly-funded-us-anti-fracking-groups-is-it-now-attacking-us-energy-companies/
When a lot of moderate people make reasonable arguments, and go unheard, it’s no surprise that extremism is born. What extremism does is not to solve the problem through violence, but to force the establishment to actually pay attention to (and hopefully act upon) the reasonable arguments that moderates were pushing for so long.
I recall seeing a mini-eco-vandalism tip on this site: Next time you see a Sierra 1500
Denali (or similar monster pickup) parked, hunch down and deflate a tire. (I assume “…and try not to be seen” is a given.)
In Texas, that’s just a regular commuter vehicle. I wouldn’t have time to do anything else…
compare the weight of a Tesla S to a full size pickup to a compact sedan.
Tesla is more like the pick-up than a Corolla
There is an interesting case of this type of activism from my own state Iowa, of all places (we are not necessarily known for being in the vanguard of things). It is that of Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya. In 2016, they started torching construction equipment and using acetylene torches to cut holes on the Dakota Access Pipeline, then under construction. There is quite a bit of information out there if you search their names, but the Grist story linked above seems like a good start.
One of the reasons they gave for outing themselves in a press conference was that there had been almost no media coverage of the sabotage. They also said that they stopped because there were signs that the pipeline was about to go online and that they didn’t want to cause oil to spill out and cause more damage. My memory of that part of the story is a bit vague at this point.
Sabotage feels freeing and heroic at the time. It is only afterwards, when the Oligarchy uses the sabotage to tighten its grip on the populace and the media, that the after effects are seen. Monitoring local, state and federal agencies charged with regulation is more useful. Getting the word out about malfeasance, lack of follow-through and corruption have much more effect. Even given the current censorship, there still is enough access to media to spread the word.
Whether its effective or not I don’t know, but they should not be surprised when eventually they get hit with terrorism charges for attacking critical infrastructure, etc. and get lengthy prison sentences.
I seem to remember that happening here in the US. I can’t remember the details but some activists got decades-long sentences for similar acts.
The leader of the extinction rebellion specifically addresses this in his speeches and says that for some going to prison should be expected. I guess at least he is transparent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_g3zoL8TFU&ab_channel=ExtinctionRebellionUK
It’s long, I listed to it in a car ride but at least you get a real flavor for what they are after.
I found it: https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2009/12/suv_arsonist_jeffrey_free_luer.html
He got 23 years which was later reduced to 10 which is still no joke. And that was just SUVs sitting in a lot. I imagine airport fuel lines might incur the full 23 years.
Counterpoint – the BLM riots (not the BLM protests).
There were thousands of protests, and only hundreds of riots. Yet the riots dominated the news cycle with assorted crimes and dead bodies, including a little girl in Atlanta shot during a traffic disruption.
Prior to then there was a rising consensus, even among conservatives and libertarians, that criminal justice reform was necessary and appropriate. Oklahomans, for example, voted for some reform the very same year they voted for Donald Trump.
After the riots, that reform has seen a marked decline in support, and police apologists have seized the far extreme (“Defund the Police”) as a wedge issue to push back against reform and reformers.
Violence in a cause can backfire even when a cause otherwise has wide support.
This is at best disingenuous and also mostly false. The right wing and mainstream liberals have always supported the police and the carceral state. Bill Clinton was the one who called black men Super Predators and signed in the crime bill that made things much worse. Any extremely mild reforms that leave the system intact don’t get anywhere close to justice and are a fig leaf cover for the constant shootings of unarmed black people. The so-called riots were as usual provoked by the police’s actions (kettling or attacking protestors) in many cases.
I guess you have to ask yourself what is the energy side/other side doing? Imminent domain/condemnation of land (for pipelines), lobbying congress for access to federal lands (taking a national resource at effectively a steep discount), and in the deep history of big oil (early 20th century) literally drawing national borders. All seemingly acts of theft just done under a “legal” framework.
I don’t ever see myself participating in this type of behavior, as I am more selfish in my usage of energy than willing to give up to the AGW cause, but at some level I admire the movement for “giving as good as you get.”
Well just 4-7 hours south (traffic dependent) there is this as reported in Construction Dive:
https://www.constructiondive.com/news/activists-forest-defenders-vandalize-atlanta-construction-executives-house/633555/
and intersectional too.
You probably saw it in your Media Market—right
If the PTB and Press aren’t listening/are ignoring and herding is into extinction, what are you going to do?
Back in the 1990’s monkey wrenching was quite a thing – I knew a few people who dabbled in it at various scales. Interestingly, a few fairly large scale incidents I’m aware of went unreported at the time – I suspect that the owners of the property that went up in smoke were worried about the insurance implications or drawing too much attention to themselves and so just reported them as accidents or random vandalism.
The problem for the movement at the time is that anarchists aren’t terribly good at organizing things and anti-terrorism laws meant potentially vastly disproportionate sentences for even quite minor acts. The often idiotic choice of target by the likes of Extinction Rebellion show that even justified acts can end up being entirely counter productive.
When traditional mechanisms are thwarted at every turn, a people have every right to force respect.
Or shall we not listen to young people like we don’t listen to Russia?
The violence being done by those with power is earth destroying. Is that acceptable?
Aren’t the people running the old peoples’ system slowly killing younger people?
Too harsh?
No.
I feel that the PlutoniumKun comment is frighteningly elitist. It is also missing the significance of the actions.
Senor PlutioniumKun seems to erroneoulsly look down on people that are not quite as sophisticated as himself. The man is informed, he appears to occupy/have occupied what these protestors would could call correctly a very privileged position (sure he might just ´have earned ´it?) But his comment is interesting in that he has just overstepped the mark (debating point), excuse me for being direct. PK should understand the grammar here.
The people PK refers disparagingly to are angry. As I read it, this site generally agrees that there are very sound reasons that they should be angry. As well as that this site (give me some latitude here) also spends a lot of time wondering why the populace don´t áct´. PK is now disparaging them in the moment that they act because their actions are not politically sophisticated.
I am English, PK, “give me a break.”
This is not, by intention, to be an ad hominem attack. I am just using one comment as a way to try and make what I think is a pertinent reply.
Just like PK I have a political track record. From my experience, which would seem to be rather different from PK´,, whilst regretting the fact that these actors were not able to locate a response such that PK might respect it, I am accustomed to únderstanding ´powerless´ responses.
I hope you guys get the drift (PK – I normally like your comments.)
I assume that this potential posting will be moderated. If you decide that it is inappropriate and do not modify it or choose not to publish it then I will understand and I will not complain. I deeply respect your site. I just felt the need to say something.
This approach is a two-way street.
In the US, we have anti-abortion people attacking abortion clinics and (started much more recently, so less covered) Jane’s Revenge attacking churches and maternity support facilities.
This sort of change in behavior is not a good thing. For starters, side A may feel that property damage is acceptable protest, but injuring people is not. Side B may disagree, and advance to injuring people rather than damaging property. Where would we end up?
On you start injuring people, it will become terror in war. We definitely don’t want that, morally (human life is very important, it is immoral to advance aims by physically injuring people), strategically (we may lose moral support of the undecided people), and pragmatically (security system violence is much stronger than us, this has the potential to spiral into escalating violence), which will destroy the true peace in society that we seek to enact.
The Ministry for the Future is a great read that a commenter here turned me on to. It presents about the only realistic route forward I’ve seen. Read it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future
The Portland “non violent” protests and the aftermath seriously damaged the local economy. I read Politico today that for the first time in 40 years Oregon apparently might elect Republicans.
I’ve know Civil Rights, Vietnam War, Earth First and anti-abortion activists and even some people who were at the Capitol on 1/6.
Each movement was largely peaceful, had intellectuals who spoke out for “action” but left the risk for others and had damaged people drawn to the movement because it gave purpose to they lives. A bomber in Birmingham, AL set off a small bomb to damage a Black church used by civil rights activists; four girls inside died. A Vietnam War activist did the same to damage a ROTC building at the Univercity of Wisconsin, he got the wrong wall and killed a PHD student working in his lab. People were justly outraged about Birmingham. PBS did a documentary on Madison featuring the bomber saying how it was an accident… no interview with the victim’s family.
The old line between “peacefully assembling” and acting was clear. The new version is a spectrum and remember: “Anything you can do they can do”.
I am not surprised that the majority of comments here are against ‘breaking things.’ Most NC regulars are contemplative, intellectual types who really really love to discuss the thorny issues that face civilization. I include myself in that group, in a small way, compared to the big guns who regularly write and comment here.
NC’ers attack shibboleths, blow up paradigms, shoot down ideologies, gleefully whack the status quo. The world cannot be changed without first destroying the beliefs and philosophies that built and sustain it.
But, there are other people who like do do stuff. Like glue themselves to bank doors, sit on a highway and block traffic, sit for months in a tree, chain themselves to bulldozers. It takes a certain kind of physical courage to do this. Not all of us have it.
Most of us here agree that our Planet is in dire peril. Species will die off, are dying off: millions of people will be displaced, drowned, starve. Oceans will rise, lakes and rivers will dry up, the Atlantic Overturning Meridional Circulation may shut down, completely altering the current relatively mild climate of the UK and northern Europe.
That’s violence. That’s breaking things. That’s breaking a planet.
Some people, and that number will probably increase as ,more and more, our relatively privileged lives are impacted, feel that talking and non-violence are not effective. Plus, non-violent actions will inevitably be met with State violence, so why not inflict some real damage when prison or death will result in either case.
Some here will argue that the problem is so great and intractable that any action we take is futile; just accept the inevitable and enjoy what life is left to us. Respectfully, please be quiet in your despair and stay out of the way of those who would take action. The rest of us, the writers, the theorists, the non-violent activists who do drama and block the streets and spray paint the banks, and the nascent others who may be planning …. something, we are all working towards the same goal; to stop the destruction of our only home. We need to develop solidarity.
Oh, and I regularly reread Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.
It seems that our actions are constrained by many factors. Two examples: Don’t do violence, theft or property destruction—that’s bad. Don’t turn people against the cause, by inconveniencing them, threatening their jobs, etc. It soon turns into “Don’t do anything,” as you mention in your next to last paragraph.
You can throw bombs and nothing happens, except jail, or you can protest peacefully and stay on the sidewalk and nothing happens (oh yeah, except sometimes jail, as you point out). In an hour, I’m heading down to the World Bank thing in DC for some “non-arrestable” protest (as my 3′ 10″ daughter, the police abolitionist, would call it). I don’t know what it will accomplish, but I’ll go anyway.
Thanks especially for your fourth and fifth paragraphs. It really needs to be pointed out.
The moment you use force … you have lost all moral standing and become a criminal.
The state constantly uses force unlawfully (even by it’s own laws) and we are supposed to sit down and take it lol. So it’s moral to let those who do use force murder your family? Many would argue not defending the earth and/or your people is immoral. And climate change is killing millions and will kill billions.
The penny-ante violence being advocated won’t stop climate change anyway. It’s just adds a few retail miseries to the wholesale disaster.
Take for example the idea of vandalizing somebody’s pickup truck. Do they realize that it is currently impossible to buy a new compact pickup? Today, you can’t do simple and efficient, even if you want to. The market has just been plain broken by too many years of easy credit and perverse incentives.
I suppose here in Canada you can import a 15-year old Japanese kei truck. Even here in the north, those little RHD trucks have become a regular sight. But the fact that you now have to go to such lengths, just to obtain a bit of genuine Utility, tells you how far out-of-touch things have gone.
Why punish people for being caught up in things that are way bigger than they are? The individual moralizing is specious. Social and collective problems such as these cannot be properly regarded, or possibly solved, at the individual level.
In a way, the notion that one can judge and punish eco-crimes at a local and individual level is merely the counterpart to the bourgeois notion of effecting social and ecological change through individual market choices. It’ BS.
What’s my answer? I don’t have one. I think we’ve been licked. We lost the war. Our bourgeoisie save themselves by fleeing further and faster than the rest–and they congratulate themselves on their personal success. They’re not the stupidest or cruellest of ruling classes in history, but they might be the most contemptible.
Thanks for your comment. Back to the article, I believe it was David Anthony of stand up fame and several podcasts (west wing thing, dollop, the audit) has mentioned that once ordinary people perceive a systemic problem that cannot be solved by traditional means (through petition, politics, organizing, etc) then history illustrates that vandalism or violence ensues. The pressure has to find a release valve. I think our modern society has accounted for this variable by militarization of the police (see Occupy Wall Street circa 2011) and is quite willing to use violence (BLM protests in 2016) to pacify organized protest. Saboteurs (literally peasants that threw their shoes into machinery as a protest) will only be interpreted as criminals in this day and age. Nothing romantic or laudable when your rotting in prison for 10+ years to protest climate change. Just ask the folks at Standing Rock what their experience taught them.