I have very mixed feelings about this book so far. Malm begins with describing the actions and strategies of climate activists he was involved with in the 1990s, who seemingly used the exact same tactics as are being used today: nonviolent civil disobedience causing as much disruption as possible, often while wearing a funny outfit. He then looks at the three “cycles” of climate action that have occurred since 2000. Malm shows how each one has been more or less the same tactics-wise as the one preceding it but that each “cycle” has grown massively in terms of the number of people participating, with the latest one involving millions of people globally until it was abruptly cut short by the pandemic.

Malm then examines the situation at present and the likely path going forward with masses of wealth still being poured into fossil fuels and plans to expand fossil fuel use and extraction further for decades to come. The foot is well and truly still on the accelerator despite the efforts of the climate movement and something really needs to change if we’re to stop it.

This is when Malm begins looking into the arguments for nonviolent protest, both moral and strategic, and breaks down why these are foolish or at times just downright nonsensical. He shows the absurdity of moral nonviolence through pointing out the very real need for violent self defence in some instances. He then also lays out the arguments used by proponents of strategic nonviolence - such as the XR leadership - and the complete ahistoricism of them. Instances of successful movements from ending slavery to ending the UK poll tax are held up by some of those in the climate movement as evidence of the success of nonviolence over violence. Malm does a very good job of dismantling these and showing how all the movements regularly brought up actually relied heavily on violent methods to achieve their victories. I think this was probably the best part of the book so far, even if it was incredibly frustrating having to read arguments along the lines of “abolishing slavery was achieved through the marketplace of ideas rather than the barrel of a musket”.

My problem with the book so far is that Malm seems to be presenting the exclusion of violent tactics from the climate movement as the primary concern holding the movement back or at least that violence is necessarily logical next step when purely peaceful means have not worked. However, we know that climate and environmental movements in the past have used violence as part of their strategy. This has historically included sabotage, destruction of equipment, tree spiking, arson, bombings, and even violence against people. But were these past movements any more or less successful than the present-day ones? If it wasn’t the lack of violent action holding these groups back, then what was it that accounts for their failure to effect change? Were these movements too small? Too clandestine? Doing the wrong kind of violence? Something wrong with their organisational structure? What can we learn from these? Well, we don’t know because, at least up to now, Malm hasn’t bothered looking into them. Its almost as if to Malm the climate movement began in 2000 and he presents the suggestion of adopting violent tactics as something completely new despite it being a tried and tested method for climate and environmental activists for many decades now.

My second problem is that the book seems to be absolutely absent of any class analysis whatsoever. I find this really quite shocking since we know from Malm’s other works (Fossil Capital) that he is very well aware of the inextricable link between the use of fossil fuels and capitalism and he has argued elsewhere that in order to move away from fossil fuels and constrain the climate catastrophe as much as we can, we will have to radically alter our social relations. For me, this is the crucial thing missing from the climate movement. A big part of the focus should be on revitalising working class organisations, strengthening the labour movement, trying to bring in trade unions, doing things that will pose a real threat to the foundations of fossil capital and open up an avenue for radical change and a green socialist future. The movement is instead almost entirely focused around students, celebrities, and middle class activists engaging in symbolic acts of resistance that cause disruption and inconvenience and have, granted, helped generate a lot of momentum to the movement but still ultimately pose very little threat to the system that Malm has so brilliantly examined in his other works.

For me, the climate movement needs to move away from this kind of symbolic resistance where individuals are merely wanting to be seen as at least “doing something” for the sake of doing something, even if that something isn’t really achieving any meaningful results. I don’t reject Malm’s calls for violent tactics to be adopted in and of themselves, but applied to the current movement they would simply continue and extend this kind of individualist pseudo-“resistance”. By seemingly ignoring the need to change the overarching strategy and structure of the climate movement and to reignite class politics, it almost feels like Malm has forgotten everything he’s written about in the past and now believes we can win by all just becoming little Ted Kaczynskis.

What was even more frustrating was the part where he talks about the youth climate strikes and at one point mentions that some workers in Germany walked out in solidarity with the strikes and with the blessing of their trade unions. But that was all. He didn’t look into this further, didn’t look at how this could be replicated or broadened, what the circumstances were that lead to it. It was the prime opportunity to link his very correct critiques of the climate movement with the rest of his works and the need he has identified to challenge capitalism but he didn’t do it. All it got was a passing comment.

Anyway, there’s basically a lot of good in the book, it so far has some decent critiques of the current movement and provides good counters to common arguments from those who believe nonviolent action is the only way. But the critiques do not go nearly far enough, and the key class element is totally absent. Yes, destroying the mining machinery would probably do more good than briefly occupying the mine, but surely we can all agree it would better still if the workers themselves destroyed their own bosses’ machinery? I really hope I’m wrong and being way too harsh and that Malm does look into this more in the next two chapters, but I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.