Op-Ed: “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” Is A Disturbing Book & Movie

By Melissa Martin, Ph.D. Last updated May 3, 2023 Share with new partner:

Pipeline — I found the book, the film, and one movie critic’s view unsettling to say the least. File photo: Kodda, Shutter Stock, licensed.

PORTSMOUTH, OH – Because I’ve researched and written about the climate crisis hoax (aka global warming, climate change) for the past two years, I found the book, the film, and one movie critic’s view unsettling to say the least. Their climate view is the annihilation of planet and people unless immediate action is taken – and that action points to violence.

Let’s Review: There is no climate change crisis.

Book by Andreas Malm

“How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight In a World on Fire” is a nonfiction book written by Andreas Malm and published in 2021 by Verso Books. He teaches human ecology at Lund University, Sweden.

Malm asserts “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?”

My reaction: Malm is asking why violence has not been used and that makes him a deranged and dangerous person that believes in the climate cult movement.

Movie Adapted by Daniel Goldhaber

Few recent books on the climate movement have so flustered audiences like Andreas Malm’s “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” points out journalist Sam Russek for The Nation as he interviews Goldhaber.

Excerpt:

For decades, the popular image of the climate activist in the media has jounced somewhere between out-of-touch tree-hugger and deranged supervillain, either too docile to meaningfully challenge their opponents or too crazy to be trusted with power. But Daniel Goldhaber’s film adaptation of How to Blow Up a Pipeline does away with that paradigm. The film—written by Goldhaber and his friends Ariela Barer and Jordan Sjol—boils down Malm’s book into a tightly wound thriller, in which eight lead characters who live hundreds of miles away from one another come together in heist-movie fashion to do exactly what the title states: destroy a major pipeline near Odessa, Tex.

During the interview, the reader finds out that Goldhaber has swallowed the climate crisis hoax hook, line, and sinker. “Climate change is urgent. We’re on a timeline of years or months, not decades, to solve this problem,” proclaims Goldhaber.

Watch the official movie trailer HERE.

On the website for the movie there is info about how viewers can “take action.”

Excerpts:

The pathway to a livable future on this planet is rapidly narrowing. The US is the world’s top producer of oil and gas, and home to the largest network of pipelines on Earth.
Global heating will become progressively worse unless we stop the majority of fossil fuel use in the next few years.

Protest is a powerful tool for change but activists seeking to preserve ecosystems and ancestral lands are threatened, attacked, or jailed using terrorism enhancement charges, in a clear strategy to dehumanize climate activists and strip them of their civil and human rights.

Since the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2017, 19 states in the US have passed “critical infrastructure laws”, and similar bills are pending in 5 other states. Many of these bills transform misdemeanors like trespassing on, disrupting, or otherwise interfering with operations at critical infrastructure facilities into felony charges.

If we want to survive we must protect the revolutionaries who take necessary actions to fight the fossil fuel industry and protect our existence.

Folks, that’s scary. The movie’s writer believes the world will soon end unless…

Movie Review by Gary Kramer

Gary Kramer writes about film for Salon, Cineaste, Gay City News, Philadelphia Gay News, The San Francisco Bay Times and Film International.

He titles his commentary Eco-terrorism as Self-Defense in “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.”

Kramer points out that the group labels themselves: “They’re gonna call us terrorists. Because we are doing terrorism,” says one of the characters. However, the protagonists target infrastructure rather than people.

“The film gets viewers invested in wanting the gang to succeed in their mission because they are operating with noble intentions, even if their approach is criminal,” writes Kramer.

My reaction: Who, but another angry and aggressive climate cultist would want a bunch of self-serving thugs to blew up a pipeline and “succeed.”

Kramer continues, “The characters are ingratiating as they drink and bond the night before their action because their camaraderie feels real. The ensemble cast is uniformly strong and likable.”

My reaction: The glue that bonded these domestic terrorists together is rage and fear – not passion to be part of the solution. By choice they’ve made themselves part of the problem with their pathetic perception of using violence. Their justification is that people will not die in the explosion.

The following is how Kramer ended his movie review: “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” is mostly satisfying because it is focused on action and not bogged down by political preaching. It might even prompt some activism.” (bold emphasis mine)

My reaction: I’m confused. Is Kramer actually advocating for a group of misguided misfits off the silver scene to blow up things that don’t belong to them because they perceive themselves as victims? If so, then he is one deranged human.

New York Times Book Review

Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Tatiana Schlossberg reviewed “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” as “compelling but frustrating,” writing that violence is problematic because “ultimately it’s impossible to control.”

Read at the following United Nation’s fearmongering articles about the nonexistent climate crisis:

Note: I have not read the book nor watched the movie – and I don’t intend to waste my time and money on violent-promoting propaganda about the climate crisis hoax.