Why Blowing up Pipeliness will not Solve the Climate Crisis

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Ilan Kelman

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May 1, 2023, 3:24:44 AM5/1/23
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"Why Blowing up Pipelines will not Solve the Climate Crisis"
By Nives Dolsak and Aseem Prakash

Tom Walker

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May 1, 2023, 11:35:13 AM5/1/23
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Duh.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)


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Ilan Kelman

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May 1, 2023, 11:45:57 AM5/1/23
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The ostensible obviousness might need to be explained to this poster https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa-jisc.exe?A2=CRIT-GEOG-FORUM;f4d771ee.2305 ?

Ilan



JOHN DE GRAAF,* JOHN DE GRAAF

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May 1, 2023, 12:16:19 PM5/1/23
to ilan_...@yahoo.com, Ilan Kelman' via SCORAI
The letter writer must not have read this excellent  piece as it addresses all the criticisms in the letter.     Will address this in more detail later.  Thanks to whomever posted the article!  John

John de Graaf

www.johndegraaf.com

Tom Walker

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May 1, 2023, 12:20:06 PM5/1/23
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I am ambivalent. Blowing up pipelines obviously won't solve the climate crisis. Writing about how blowing up pipelines won't solve the climate crisis also won't solve the climate crisis. The problem with metaphors is that some people will take them literally.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)


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Joe Zammit-Lucia

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May 1, 2023, 1:42:49 PM5/1/23
to Tom Walker, ilan_...@yahoo.com, sco...@googlegroups.com
Dear Tom,

Maybe.

But maybe some people need to be told that pretending (maybe just to themselves) that they are moving the process forward by blowing up pipelines is not productive. And maybe they should turn their minds, resources and efforts to more productive uses.

Personally, I have little hope of that happening. Many climate activists are wedded to what is essentially performative art moving into illegality for shock value as their preferred approach. Whether it works or not does not seem to be very high up their list of priorities.

A little like corporations and finance embarking on all sorts of supposed climate mitigation approaches with little interest in whether they have any impact on climate or not. They have ticked the box.

I guess humans are the same whatever side of any debate they are on. They just need to be seen to be doing something - effectiveness be damned.

Best

Joe

Ruben Anderson

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May 1, 2023, 3:22:19 PM5/1/23
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Wow, I felt like I need to take a shower after reading that letter. 

For those of you who did not click through to a forum response that Ilan posted here it is:

"Jesus christ, what an offensive piece of capitalist apology, on the first of May of all days, doing its very best to uncritically shroud practices of infrastructural disruption in the language of violence. "A commitment to ballots not bullets is crucial"—what a fucking galling quip in the country of mass-shootings, to compare damaging a pipeline to shooting humans.

If any of you are curious: it's not worth the read, just corporatist apologetics, pleading that we must simply wait for the shareholders to fix the climate. Utter drivel.”


I must say, I completely agree with this. Particularly loathsome was their constant use of the word violence, and sometimes property violence.


I also agree with everyone here saying that blowing up pipelines is not going to fix the problem. But nothing proposed in the letter is going to fix the problem and everything in it has been tried a lot more times than blowing up pipelines. If all we are going to do is repeat ourselves, then maybe it is just that blowing up pipelines hasn’t worked…yet. 


Anyhow, I trust the authors of the Forbes letter have adequate Champagne on hand to wash the taste of bootlicking out of their mouths. 

Ruben (not Nelson)





On May 1, 2023, at 10:42 AM, 'Joe Zammit-Lucia' via SCORAI <sco...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Dear Tom,

Maybe.

But maybe some people need to be told that pretending (maybe just to themselves) that they are moving the process forward by blowing up pipelines is not productive. And maybe they should turn their minds, resources and efforts to more productive uses.

Personally, I have little hope of that happening. Many climate activists are wedded to what is essentially performative art moving into illegality for shock value as their preferred approach. Whether it works or not does not seem to be very high up their list of priorities.

A little like corporations and finance embarking on all sorts of supposed climate mitigation approaches with little interest in whether they have any impact on climate or not. They have ticked the box.

I guess humans are the same whatever side of any debate they are on. They just need to be seen to be doing something - effectiveness be damned.

Best

Joe

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Erik Assadourian

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May 20, 2023, 7:14:16 AM5/20/23
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Hi all,

I highly recommend the book (not the Forbes essay, and I haven't seen the fictionalized movie version). The book makes a strong case for property destruction as a tactic and debunks some arguments that have become uncritically accepted (e.g. Chenoweth's work). The book is a short easy read (or listen) and we'll be discussing it in a Gaian Discussion on June 6th at 7pm ET. You are all invited to join. More details here: https://gaianism.org/how-do-i-get-involved/upcoming-events/ 

Best,

Erik

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