The New Yorker amplified calls for eco-terrorism in the name of sparking action on climate change last week by inviting Andreas Malm, the Swedish author of “How To Blow Up A Pipeline,” onto its podcast.
In the episode titled “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” Malm explains how it’s time for the climate change movement to “diversify its tactics and move away from an exclusive focus on polite, gentle, and perfectly peaceful civil disobedience.”
Malm stopped his recommendations short of “kidnapping oil workers” but said that “civil disobedience” ostensibly to save the planet should include mass acts of “intelligent sabotage” and property destruction, such as blowing up pipelines.
“I’m not saying we should stop strikes or square occupations or demonstrations of the usual kind. I’m all in favor of that. But I do think we need to step up because so little has changed and so many investments are still being poured into new fossil fuel projects,” Malm said. “So I am in favor of destroying machines, property — not harming people, that’s a very, very important distinction there. And I think property can be destroyed in all manner of ways, or it can be neutralized in a very gentle fashion as when we defeated the SUVs, or in a more spectacular fashion, as in potentially blowing up a pipeline that’s under construction. That’s something that people have done.”
“So you’re recommending blowing up a pipeline,” the host confirmed.
Malm justified such actions by claiming that the supposedly moral pros of combatting the “climate crisis” outweigh the cons.
“I don’t see how that property damage could be considered morally legitimate, given what we know of the consequences of such a project,” Malm said.
The author also pledged “to be part of any kind of action of the sort that I advocate in the book” before criticizing the climate change movement’s tendency toward nonviolent protest.
Hellbound and Down 