Andreas Malm on Palestine, Climate Activism and over-shooting 1.5 °C

Andreas Malm is a Swedish climate activist, associate professor of human ecology at Lund University, and author of the best-selling How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire. Naomi Klein describes him as “one of the most original thinkers on the subject" of climate change.

In this interview with his Verso editor, Sebastian Budgen, he discusses the origins of his climate activism, strategic failures of the climate movement, his pro-Palestinian politics, and eco-socialism.

0:00:00 Intro
0:00:43 Early life
0:13:17 Palestine
0:28:50 Involvement in Climate Politics
0:35:50 Fossil Capital
0:41:20 Robert Brenner (long waves)
0:44:43 Eco-socialism
0:50:11 Progress of the Storm (opposing transhumanism/OOO)
0:54:52 Corona Climate Chronic Emergency (war communism and ecological Leninism)
1:09:19 How to Blow Up a Pipeline
1:13:06 Strategic failures of the climate movement
1:27:23 White Skin, Black Fuel
1:33:19 Overshoot (Adaptation and carbon capture going past 1.5C)
1:43:30 Psychoanalysis
1:46:50 Wilderness

[kennethhymes]

Rsdicals are going to have to start getting more nuts and bolts about social relations: I cannot fly to tunisia to help out, and more crucially, anything truly radical i do locally may create a better long term future, but it will likely harm my partner and children immediately, and sever other social bonds as wel. In my case, I might very well become unhoused in Michigan were I to act on my principles forthrightly. Solutions to this core issue for the roughly seventy percent of people who want positive radical change, that would be more helpful than a lot of theory and historical score settling and position defending.

[franklittle]

Boy, I'm a lot older that Andreas, but the evolution, rise and fall of the left and anarchism here in Pittsburgh USA in the 1990s and 00's was just like in Sweden. Yes, 4th internationalists were nice people.

[mkbnett]

All the actions listed around 1:14:00 are petty and destructive and do not fundamentally change the structures of need... People in crowded cities away from natural abundance will always need resources taken from afar. This always requires energy, and even renewables have long payback periods. We need agrarian solutions, Permaculture ecovillages, and development of regenerative productive capacities. Destructive tactics are like cutting off a head of the Hydra.

[michaelrch]

Is there some reason that Andreas and Roger Hallam haven't had the conversation about tactics?

[angwantibo]

I get that Malm wants to distance himself from Latour, but the quarrel with Moore is so weird and its even weirder that he groups Latour and Moore together as this makes it seem like he is avoiding something that Moore would confront him with. Strategy is super important and I think political activism needs strategical thinking in order to realise its agency, but we also need to understand how deeply the capitalist mode of production is rooted in the exploitation of nature. I don't see how we can change social relations if we don't understand them properly. Diversity of tactics should include sabotage as well as the exploration and the development of non-exploitative social relations. Yes, its the fossil capitalists that profit the most and sabotage can minimise the incentive to continue present ways of exploitation, but its also true that our whole mode of production is dependent on this exploitation and I don't see how that can change if we don't face it head on, if we don't realise that this will require radical changes in the ways we produce, the ways we live, the ways we feed ourselves etc. pp...

[singingway]

1:20:51 the big events, big concerts, ARE fossil fuel expenditures.

[noahsark]

"Never ending anarchist hangover" haha sounds very familiar to me, personally.

[paulaa]

Leninism makes no sense. The climate crisis is not a political nor an economic crisis (as yet). Leninist manoeuvring makes sense against a backdrop of severe poverty and archaic political structures that are seen as brittle and approaching overthrow. Hungry desperate people opt for a sudden restructure. The climate crisis is of course a radically dangerous threat to billions of people. But it can still be forestalled/ignored through 'business as usual'. Collapse will be relatively slow, selectively damaging nations and areas, but allowing some to continue on and perhaps make new empires on top of the weak ... Power politics and nation-state entities will continue to determine our fate on the planet.

[MetabolismofCities]

Fantastic interview, long enough to cover theoretical, personal and contemporary issues. Please do more of them, there sure is an appetite!

[singingway]

1:41:48 circular carbon product -- a dangerous delusion.

[janllh]

To protect capital, indeed, but the latter must be understood in the widest sense possible, i.e. the entire global money-commodity nexus, to think in terms of €$etc, even as means of compensation for extant or historical inequities is to not yet grasp how radical the crisis is and how correspondingly radical the solution will have to be. It's not just about fossil fuel corporations and their assets but the whole system whose life blood they supply. All the dead labour that drives living labour will have to be forsaken, so that life might have a chance of flourishing

[Ecotechnologist]

Genuine question but how do people afford to just be parts of revolutions? How can you just go to Tunisia and fight? Don’t you have to work 24:40

[singingway]

I hate it when moderators ask them to tell their whole life story. I am here for climate strategy.

[anyoneattheendoftime]

They hated Andreas because he told them the truth.

[duarte]

this guy right here fucks ! repping a pflp tshirt talking bout blowing up pipelines i though we couldnt have it all im in love

[majedharb]

Very impressive. I have been involved in the environmental movement in America for the last 25 years . Still, I raĺy for Palestine. I think both originate from the concept of Justice. Working fo one should supplement working for the other

[singingway]

Are there other ways to shift the crisis from the victims (all of us) onto those driving the climate crisis? How to make it their crisis? Pushing for nationalization of this rogue industry and indicting the fossil fuel CEOs (both current and former), their boards and shareholders, for CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.

[jamestiburon]

You speak beautiful English. Kudos. I understand the rage. I do think the feedback loops are locked in already. As soon as Arctic Ice is lost (Less than 1 million kilometers), We soon, within 3 years, loose ability to keep agriculture sustainable because of rapid heat increase. And Methane is NOT even taken into account by the IPCC. I am sympathetic, but may I suggest the "Post Doom" videos by the recently deceased Michael Dowd.

[Tommeyification]

which struggle on adaptation in france does he mean?

[valardohaeriz]

I love Andreas Malm, his courage inspires me. Why can't he have his own weekly podcast?