How to Blow Up a Pipeline

De: Andreas Malm

Narrado por: Brian Arens

Duración: 4 h y 19 m

Resumen del Editor

Update: In response to listener feedback, this audiobook has been edited to improve sound quality.

Property will cost us the earth.

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.

This audio edition of How to Blow Up a Pipeline is skillfully narrated by Brian Arens, an Audible listener favorite.

©2021 Andreas Malm (P)2022 Echo Point Books & Media, LLC

Great read and inspiration

Very interesting arguments and supporting evidence. I enjoyed the examples and thought provoking stories. Definitely worth a read. There are a few weird audio skips throughout, I think mistakes made in editing. It’s frustrating but not a deal breaker. Other than that I liked the book.

Concise and Insightful

The book is concise and provides hope like a ray of sunshine breaking thru the noxious smog churned out by the capitalists.

I'd urge everyone who reads the title to pause and take a moment before they judge this book. It does not call for people to be harmed, or otherwise mistreated. In fact, the author eloquently argues against it with full force.

The book is short, so why not listen and consider the author's position in full, rather than assuming what the book is about based on it's clickbait title. We're all stuck in this capitalist paradise for at least the foreseeable future, and authors need to move copies of their books to pay the bills.

good but...

I really appreciate the book as a whole however there are a few weird skips through various points.

Inspiring. Hopeful historical justification.

such an inspiring message in the face of the desperation of climate change. Fascinating exploration of the difference between terrorism causing human deaths and terrorism directed only at property destruction. only wish he told me more specifically how to blow up a pipeline in my area

Important!

Anyone who is even remotely worries about the fate of the climate should read/listen to this — not necessarily in preparation for joining some radical eco-activist plank but in understanding the stakes involved.

Neat summation

A very good summary of the crossroads environmentalism finds itself at in the 21st century.

Food for thought

Compelling arguments and an instructive lesson in the commonly censored versions of famous historical uprisings. Gandhi and Martin Luther King certainly appeared more peaceful before I heard this book. Some odd glitches in the audio though.

Excellent, thought provoking work that challenges accepted thought

Excellent narration quality. Clear and concise argument throughout. A very easy to understand text that offers a deep reservoir of critical literature and perspectives to deeply consider/reconsider.

A call to action, a call to hope?

In no place does this book actually describe how to bomb a pipeline. So if that’s what you’re looking for you’ll need to take a chemistry class, join a terrorist organization or find a copy of the anarchist cookbook floating around among other ways… If Mr. Malm had included instructions, I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be writing this review now. Regardless, Mr. Malm attempts to dispel the idea of using solely passivism as a successful strategy in stopping global capitalisms addiction to fossil fuels.

Only criticism I have is in that he doesn’t address surveillance capitalism, and what it might really take to organize a group, a movement…without becoming one of the newest examples of how reactionary’s use any excuse to justify a severe backlash, that takes the guises of increasingly militarized police forces that gain more legitimacy and funding with each new example of anti capitalist militancy. The book seems to lack the imagination to explore what counter revolutionary’s might do in response to a mass vandalization of his favorite example, SUV’s. He repeatedly acknowledges that there are counter revolutionary forces. I’m guessing by not discussing how they are constantly looking for boogeyman, even just making them them up, like Antifa, Immigrants, BLM, Jews, Muslims… anyone in which the label the other can become an object to direct their misguided hatred towards, the very capitalists causing their own destruction and filling their heads with long disproven fossil fuel zombie propaganda that seems to never die.

How might an environmental movement gain enough mass appeal to overwhelm the reaction, the backlash that will result from any successful militant actions? Considering that mass culture today seems to be completely driven by capital public relations institutions that are at this point so embedded in pop culture that people mostly just go around mouthing whatever industry BS one of their “influencers” are enticed/encouraged to say: Something to chew on for the next book.

The idea is here, and the truth is here. Certainly MLK would have been less effective without Malcolm X’s threat of violence. Classic Carrot Stick, good cop bad cop psychological manipulation.

I’m just unsure of who will act on his message? Will the kid’s target SUV’s or electric cars, hybrids, buses and trains? Will be cooler to save ourselves or self immolate?

incredible book

while listening to this book I literally said yo myself "wow what an incredible mind!"