The Changing Etiquette of Ecotage

Review: Andreas Malm, How To Blow Up a Pipeline (2021)

As climate breakdown intensifies with the hothousing of Gaia, the topic of ecology and violence becomes more heated thanks to the debate sparked by Andreas Malm’s How To Blow Up a Pipeline (2021). Despite its breezily provocative title Malm’s slim book isn’t a cookbook for anarchists or a monkey-wrenching manual but instead makes the case for extending economic sabotage (ecotage) in democratic societies, but doing so within a mindful political practice, hand in hand with a New Model ecological movement.

This is a cute argument, and Malm, a Swedish climate scientist and environmental activist, doesn’t explore its plausibility so much as plead for its implementation, insisting the ecological movement must shift ‘from protest to resistance’ using violence to prevent civilisational suicide by galvanising the collective action that could force governments to urgently implement the steep cuts to CO² emissions. 

We are asked to imagine a near future when the ‘supplications’ of climate scientists have changed nothing and school children are still undertaking climate strikes holding aloft their eloquent placards and are still ignored as fossil fuels continue to be drilled and pumped from the earth and CO² spews into the atmosphere to add more momentum to the Great Acceleration. What should be done then? Do we simply give up and prepare for extinction? Or can we envisage a new phase of resistance beyond the present cycle of ecological struggle? 

This circumstance means violence can no longer be avoided. The ruling absolute pacifism of a herbivorous ecological movement in the developed world, championed by figures like Bill McKibben in the US and Roger Hallam (founder of Extinction Rebellion) in Britain, is too cautious, overly respectful of private property and an ingrained prejudice that violence is always wrong – a conclusion reinforced by a selective reading of certain historical turning points like the Civil Rights struggle in the US or Gandhi’s struggle against British colonialism. 

But is political violence a legitimate weapon in liberal or representative democracy? Unsurprisingly the crux here is what Malm means by violence. 

Malm is no incendiary child of the anarchist bomber Souvarine, who preached the nihilistic destruction of the world of property and class in Zola’s Germinal. Instead, Malm’s eloquent case for violence is modest, focussing on ecotage or the destruction of the physical infrastructure of the fossil economy. Killing is categorically ruled out. At no point does Malm suggest that elite commitment to ‘business as usual’ or fossil-capital’s determination to exploit every last known reserve of gas or oil justifies harming or killing those who might be characterised as ‘agents of ecocide.’ 

Bear in mind how high the stakes are if our present course – drilling, ‘business as usual’ and the rest – continues unchecked. 

In Earth System Science (2015), climate scientist Timothy Lenton outlined how strong mitigation measures will be necessary to reduce CO² emissions to zero. He noted that simply stabilising emissions will still leave CO² levels at twice the pre-industrial levels at 560ppm, while existing international targets on cutting emissions are – notionally at least – more ambitious. Limiting the rise in global warming to 2°C (above the international target of 1.5°C) would require us to actively remove CO² from the atmosphere by the end of the century. Even more sobering is that Lenton calculates that if currentlyknown carbon reserves (5,000 billion tonnes) are treated as an absolute ceiling on future CO² emissions, these would add 10°C to average global temperatures, a level far in excess of what would extinguish life on the planet. 

Ted Kaczynski, Unabomber

Malm himself is insistent that reducing CO² brooks no compromise and the necessary task of tearing out the embedded infrastructure generating emissions will not be accomplished by half measures. The urgency of climate breakdown dictates that ‘breaking the spell’ of ‘business as usual’ means that fossil fuel assets be mothballed now – and habitual investor expectations of fabulous fossil profits crushed. 

Malm’s advocacy of political violence as direct action and ecotage that rejects terror and killing is generally unambiguous, but it contains ellipses we will return to. Even so, the actual record of ecotage and monkey-wrenching is remarkably pacific. Malm cites the research of Michael Loadenthal who recorded 27,100 actions of ecotage and so on, between 1973 and 2010. These actions led to four deaths, with the late Unabomber Ted Kaczynski responsible for three of them (Kaczynski was a sociopathic outlier and never part of a group or movement). The other death was Pim Fortuyn’s assassination during the Dutch elections in 2002. The assassin was an environmentalist and animal rights activist who explained his motive was Fortune’s Islamophobia – an untypical case. 

Activists from Ocean Rebellion set a boat alight, opposite a COP26 venue, Glasgow, 2021. Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images)

This radical record of violence starkly contrasts with the record of Alt-Right and fascist violence across North America and Europe in the same period (this violence has even intensified since 2010). The earlier cycles of eco-activism took place in a relative social void, according to Malm. These acts were often low-level and ‘promiscuous’: smashing the windows of the local McDonalds, daubing banks, jamming up ATMs, attacking restaurants, farms, car lots, liberating mink from farms, and so on. From the 1980s to the early 2000s this militant ecology (ecotage, hunt saboteurs, communal squatting, communes, off-the-grid travelling, DIY punk culture) ‘drank from two ideological wells’: deep ecology and animal liberation.

A deeper affinity often united these two overlapping constituencies – a Year Zero conviction that industrial civilisation was unsustainable and should be swept away or humanity as a whole would be endangered. Some neo-Malthusian versions of this outlook welcomed a global population crash. As Malm observed in White Skin, Black Fuel: On The Danger of Fossil Fascism (2021) overpopulation was always elsewhere, in the developing world and - surprise - was the main drain on finite resources. This was the logic of the reactionary ecology of Garrett Hardin who spelt out the ‘tragedy of the commons’ in 1968 (an ‘intellectual’ field that is presently thriving) which invidiously projected the ‘West’ as a ‘lifeboat.’ Even a child knows a lifeboat will only take so many people. 

So climate breakdown also implies the existence of other counter-projects like those of the nativist alt-right or ethno-nationalism who ‘fever dream’ eco-malign futures and cruelly adaptationist strategies involving a great winnowing of the Anthropos. Warped fascist phantasies dream of an ‘Eco Fortress’ and throwing black and brown humanity overboard. 

Right populists and fascists know their societies (responsible for the overwhelming bulk of historical CO² emissions) retain greater resources and resiliency while the impact of global warming has so far hit less developed societies more severely. Even so, this seems to be changing. The heat dome over the US, the fires in the Canadian wilderness, and the scorching heatwave across southern Europe this summer hint that no society will indefinitely outrun climate breakdown. These fantasies have filtered into contemporary politics in the age of post-truth and denialism. The seeds of ‘fossil fascism’ and totalitarianism are apparent if other, saner alternatives don’t win out. Hyper-masculinist White nativism is indifferent to a world on fire, while its dreams are full of human pyres, burning gasoline and spree shootings.

Counter-protesters hold signs and shout slogans during an anti-Sharia rally in Seattle. David Ryder / Reuters

We can read the reactionary, racist violence of nativism, white ethno-nationalism and neo-fascism as the handmaiden of a spectral fossil capitalism. Innumerable ties bind these groups to the right-wing media outlets like Fox News, the metastasizing fundamentalist Christian right and the think tanks seeded by faucets gushing the green stuff of sociopathic billionaires such as Robert Mercer and the Koch brothers (David died in 2019). As fossil capital continues to obstruct tackling climate breakdown and realising Net Zero, the question is posed: is it time for a militant ecological movement and a new strategy of non-lethal political violence and direct action? 

Following the money – let us remember added CO² is burning forests now, and at the heart of that conflagration is wealth and class. Malm presents many eye-popping facts and details illustrating this point – when the money is outsized and vast it is no longer mere money but social power. In 2017 forty-four different individuals inherited $186bn. In comparison, the fourth largest fund devoted to adaptation to what is referred to with increasing dissonance as climate change was worth just $2.78bn. Similarly, Malm observes that the lifestyles of the rich and the burgeoning middle class are costing us the planet. For example, in 2018 if SUV owners had been classified as a country they would have ranked seventh highest for CO² emissions. 

Drawing on a distinction made by Henry Shue between luxury and subsistence emissions Malm observes that the poor of the world need energy but not carbon (or the profits from carbon). Put simply humanity can’t afford the rich – their yachts and private jets contribute truly eye-watering amounts to annual CO² emissions. Neither does this ressentiment yet harbour a Populist urge to ‘eat the rich.’ Nowhere does Populism really extend to such radical classist solutions except perhaps the ‘faux socialism’ of anti-semitism violently denouncing the George Soros’s of the world – a stance that will never fundamentally threaten wealth or power or offer genuine environmental social justice.

Private jets contribute truly eye-watering amounts to annual CO²

Luxury emissions are ‘low hanging fruit’ for any mitigation agreement intended to achieve Net Zero. But nowhere is there a serious effort to cut these emissions. What we have is honeyed words and long-winded national and international commitments to Net Zero, renewable energy and sustainability from the world’s major powers that are a hoax on humanity. Efforts to block environmental action sees climate denial joined by climate delay: cuts are always for the day after tomorrow, always for other, ‘bigger’ polluters while national coal, oil and gas reserves are in practice inviolable. 

Malm thinks a great weakness of previous cycles of eco-activism was substitutionism. There was a disconnect between the clandestine monkey-wrenching activists with little time for the sleepy ‘masses’ or the wider, more respectable ecological movement. In truth, accusations of elitism aimed at monkey-wrenching eco-activists can often be overdone, and attention should be paid to who circulates such criticisms, especially when ‘eco hairies,’ ‘tree huggers’ and similar are contrasted to ‘Us’: the hardworking drones trying to put food on the table and pay the mortgage. 

So Malm rejects political terror – say, for example, targeting CEOs of oil corporations or anyone who could cast as an ‘agent’ or ‘ally’ of the fossil economy. In 2019 XR badly misjudged a protest targeting London commuter trains in Canning Town – criticised by Malm and owned up to as a mistake by XR’s leadership. It isn’t difficult to imagine how notions like ‘agents of ecocide’ could prove quite elastic for some eco-militants, persuaded that to sacrifice themselves and culpable Others was justified in light of the stakes. 

Concerning these terrestrial stakes, the climate science consensus is built on the accuracy of its data. It is real in contrast to the obfuscating science serving fossil capital. Equally this science is light years from the fables of denialism or even the Great Replacement theory megaphoned by the alt-right across North America and Europe. Malm critically calls out XR's fear of challenging the prerogatives of private property. The fate of private property is deeply consequential as it introduces the subject of leaving capitalism and what sort of social transformation would be necessary. How would capital or private property survive a transition to an ecologically sustainable, degrowth or steady state society? 

From protest to resistance: Just Stop Oil protesters in London. PA Media.

So political care is essential in moving from protest to resistance, using violence to destroy the machinery of the fossil industry without harming individuals. Demonstrating realism Malm acknowledges ‘excessive extremism’ or violence would be a gift to fossil capital and undermine attempts to build an effective, mass ecological movement and links to wider publics in democratic societies. As the stakes increased, lethal political violence could offer ample reasons for governments or states to increase repression or even resort to a strategy of tension (strategia della tensione), currying hostility among the populace and erecting barriers between ‘ordinary’ citizens and the ecological movement. 

A defining strategic choice for the spectrum of green politics in the developed world has either been accommodation / recuperation, entering democratic politics, diluting the message, becoming a lobbying, fundraising machine, or eco-saviour militancy at the margins of society. And when it isn’t shirked there is a less palatable message proposing that civilisation will have to be completely reordered to ensure its survival. Perhaps both choices were symptoms of the limited traction of ecology until this point though such judgements await a nuanced balance sheet of the movement. 

Malm himself contrasts civil disobedience and direct action. The former was about ‘moral suasion’ and has dominated ecological politics since the early 70s. Though ‘moral suasion’ alone isn’t enough, it is a key element of democratic politics generally and should be retained alongside a campaign for the destruction of the infrastructure of the fossil economy. It is essential that the latter shun lethal political violence. Despite his increasing legion of posthumous admirers the sociopathic nihilism of the late Unabomber should be rejected as a model of resistance.

Malm notices the peculiarity of complaints that civil disobedience, protest and direct action erode democratic norms. It’s hard to disagree that glaring cynicism is required airing such criticism given governmental inaction on their climate promises. In recent decades, while citizens were offered security (contra welfare), civil liberties and freedoms of democratic societies were further rolled back. 

Protest against the murder of Honduran environmental activist Berta Caceres over her opposition to a hydroelectric dam. Johan Ordonez / AFP / Getty Images.

We referred to Malm’s ellipses on lethal political violence. Firstly, Malm admits that any struggle adopting the strategic guise of a commitment to non-lethal violence, couldn’t absolutely guarantee no person would be harmed or killed. This is clear from the social struggles of the past, whether against slavery, colonialism or breaking the back of apartheid in South Africa, to choose some random examples. Often those deaths are likely to be on the side of the oppressed. 

Consider the murder of environmental defenders. A recent Global Witness report estimated 1,733 environmental and land defence activists were murdered, often with impunity, in the decade since 2012 (GW report this is almost certainly an underestimate). 40% of these assassinations were of Indigenous people protesting or in conflict with agribusiness, logging, mineral or mining concerns. More than half the global total was in Brazil, Mexico and Columbia. In Brazil between 2012-21 342 killings took place with 40% of victims Indigenous and Afro-Brazilians and 85% of the murders taking place in the Amazonian basin, aiding deforestation.

In his concluding remarks, Malm speculates that the moment might have arrived for the ‘cleansing force’ of a Fanonian ecological movement to replace the Gandhian approaches that have dominated. We consider talk of a Fanonian ecological movement an unfortunate lapse likely to obscure Malm’s overall argument. Malm effectively exposes the flaws of pacifists who appeal to historical precedents like Gandhi and the Indian independence movement who neglect to mention inconvenient historical details like the role that violence played in making India ungovernable, helping sink British rule. A democratic, deliberative ecological movement would debate such strategic issues instead of treating ideological prohibitions put in place by venerable ‘grey beards’’ as irreproachable. 

Mahatma Gandhi and Fritz Fanon

The French Christian anarchist and pacifist, Jacques Ellul, warned against the dangers of radical violence and resorting to terror to achieve progressive social goals – those precious social goals would retreat before the escalatory logic of such violence, of mimesis and an escalating tit-for-tat violence. This is a serious consideration. There are dangers in strategies of symmetry that embrace lethal political violence in order to challenge the state's monopoly of violence and destroy its power with their own counter-violence. Leninism is one such model of radical symmetry that persists in bastardised form as zombie Stalinism while Lenin was even recently commended to environmentalists by a veteran eco-socialist Derek Wall in his poor book The Climate Strike (2021). 

The logic of lethal political violencemight even be cast in terms of defensive action, or reformulated as the inadequate prophylaxis of Etienne Balibar’s milquetoast ‘politics of civility’ (realism dictates killing is unavoidable but we should avoid cruelty and terror) but it carries the seeds of dangers which radicals rarely fully admit or properly address. Equally, there is always a danger that millenarian ideologies lead to the crystallisation of violence as an unavoidable means to sweeping away the old world, part of the warp and weft of historical evolution. Such a stance embodies a potential exterminatory or totalitarian telos, or what S.N. Eisenstadt termed the ‘ideologization of terror’. 

Ruby Montoya and Jessica Renzicek

Such controversies remind us the global struggle to avert climate breakdown is also a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. The fight for environmental social justice dicates we try to extend democracy and autonomy. Democracy also has a role preventing eco-activists from running too far ahead of the wider movement. Clarity about the limitations of lethal political violence is vital. 

One of the most inspiring recent examples of ecotage Malm discusses is that of Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya, who jammed up machinery and drilled holes in the Dakota Access Pipeline in the US with ‘careful loving hands.’ They adopted non-lethal, violent tactics only after the movement exhausted the legal avenues of peaceful protest and civil disobedience. Eventually, Reznicek and Montoya held a press conference and confessed their acts of ecotage, having delayed the pipeline for months as well as considerably increasing the cost of its construction. Treznicek and Montoya are serving 'terrorism enhanced sentences' of 8 and 6 years respectively as well as facing multi-million dollar fines – a deliberately draconian sentence – painting the women as domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh though they never harmed a single individual. 

Such exploits leave Malm hopeful. Perhaps the exemplary ecotage of Reznicek and Montoya is more than a straw in the wind, promising a social movement with a serious intent to up the ante against the fossil-industrial complex in the midst of a burning world.

Jules Etjim
August 2023

References

‘Last Line of Defence’, Global Witness,  globalwitness.org, 2021-09-13, accessed 2023-08.
Andreas Malm, How To Blow Up A Pipeline (2021)
Andreas Malm and The Zetkin Collective, White Skin, Black Fuel: On The Danger of Fossil Fascism (2021) 
Michael Loadenthal, The Politics of Attack: Communiqués and Insurrectionary Violence (2017)
Jacques Ellul, Violence (1969)
Timothy Lenton, Earth System Science (2015)