CACOR member TD Dougherty recently came across a book with a rather frightening title: How To Blow Up a Pipeline.  Most CACOR members and interested parties might well skip this book just based on the title, but TDD thought it might be useful at least to know what’s in the book.

Notes to the reader:

1. This is a rather untraditional book review that centres on what I perceive to be the author’s main points and the facts that brought him to his conclusions, with nothing about style, comprehensiveness, readability, and other usual concerns.
2. There are about 160 pages in the book and nearly 40 pages of notes at the end of the book. Sadly, these comments and references would have been much better placed on the relevant pages in the main body of the text—many readers will never get to them.
3. My content is all written in italics.

 

Introduction

Let me ask and answer these few questions.

• Has scientific study helped us understand how our world works, our place in it, and how we have been changing its atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere?
  • Yes, it has.
• Have we gained experience with the collapse of ecosystems and societies?
  • Yes, we have.
• Have scientific understanding and experience been shared with government and business leaders?
  • Yes, they have.
• Has our study, experience, and communication resulted in resolving our ecological problems, especially human-induced climate change?
  • No, they have not.
• So what is next?
  • We could continue with more of the same or add something different.

This book explores past experiences with similar challenges and the circumstances in which we now find ourselves.

I have largely not put the pieces of the puzzle together in the way Mr. Malm does in the book.  Indeed, my professional life as an environmental scientist centred entirely on trying to gather data and information, then turning the knowledge gained into advice to anyone who would listen.  Admittedly, I am not yet ready to give up on that process.  However, at a minimum, I can now at least understand the alternatives Mr. Malm explores in this work.

The book does not contain instructions for attacking people or property, let alone pipelines.  At times, it warns against that.  The book does characterize past social struggles—climate change being simply one of our current major social struggles, probably the most important and pressing—and points out what happened to resolve them.

This review is offered with the goal of helping expand our understanding of our predicament and how we might climb out of it.]

[Review content]

Conclusion

 There are aspects to our reactions to the climate crisis that are under-appreciated by some, myself included.  Providing information, requesting and even demanding action, and peaceful protest have begun to elicit little more than rhetoric in the most important societal circles.

Every day that we continue to put greenhouse gas into our environment, our situation worsens.  The scientific evidence is clear, but our reactions largely remain incongruent.

As I have often said, paraphrasing Albert Einstein, the thinking that got us into this mess won’t get us out of it.

 Book Review–Malm’s How To Blow Up a Pipeline.