How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Despite the title, this book is merely a philosophical treatise on the need to engage in violent measures to exact wide-spread societal change. From an historical standpoint, this is not an outlandish proposition but the writing is tediously academic and is unlikely to sway anyone who doesn't already agree.

What happened to the end of my book? It literally just ended at the end of a random anecdote and shifted into notes. 

In fact the entire book was just a random selection of anecdotes. It just shifted between them with no consistent narrative nor any conclusions.

This book was so  disappointing. I am very passionate about the topic but this did nothing to help the cause or help me with my activism. As a background on the topic to read in combination with other books on the same topic it is probably okay, but as a standalone book it is not great. 

Perhaps I took the title too literally, but it was disappointing to discover how little of this book is concerned with articulating actual tactics for violent climate resistance. It is predominantly an argument for the necessity of violence, a position I agree with having bought a book called “How To Blow Up A Pipeline,” but which ends up feeling as late and ineffectual as the doomerism that spurred writing it.

The last chapter dedicated to rebuking climate defeatism is the most engaging (if shockingly bleak). It seems an altogether more difficult challenge to pull people back from the ledge of accepted annihilation, which Malm does a commendable (if brief) job of. I just can't help feeling like I am no closer to actualizing any of the goals that have been hazely waved before me. The anger and restlessness is already here, what's left is the difficult task of directing it.