Two of the most powerful tools in the climate activist's toolbox are protest and divestment. 

Protest is a constitutionally protected activity that seeks to influence the behavior of powerful groups such as governments, universities and corporations. Andreas Malm, a human ecologist who teaches at Lund University in Sweden, has written a provocative new book about the role of protest in the climate movement: How to Blow Up a Pipeline.

But first, here's a few notes about Malm and his books. His earlier Fossil Capital is an interesting exploration of the reasons why Britain moved from a reliance on water power to coal power at the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Malm makes a strong case that the switch occurred not because of cost differential, but due to capital's insatiable need to control and crush labor. It's fair to add that Malm's a Marxist who tends to interpret every scenario according to that dynamic. Also, the book is an expansion of his Ph.D. dissertation and therefore a bit dry in places. Beware the equations. For $9.99 on Kindle, though, it's not a bad buy. Secondly, How to Blow Up a Pipeline doesn't actually include instruction of pipeline destruction. The lurid title may be an attempt to goose sales. That gambit failed with my library system, which has chosen not to carry Malm's explosive book.  

Successful protest movements, Malm argues, succeed not because of their devotion to peaceful protest in the style of Mahatma Ghandi or Martin Luther King. In particular, the American Civil Rights Movement succeeded because of MLK and rabble-rousing, violent groups led by individuals such as Malcolm X. Malm believes that radical protestors functioned as a powerful counterpoint, compelling the protectors of the elite status quo to make concessions to the peaceful protestors. Historical hagiography, he contends, has largely erased the key function of these extreme groups. 

Hence, regarding climate activism, Malm rejects the single-minded recipe of non-violent protest espoused by many climate leaders. (He seems to revel in taking potshots at the self-righteous invocations of Bill McKibben.) The Climate Movement, evidently, needs at least the threat of exploding pipelines and violent street clashes in order for fossil-fuel addicted interests to pay due attention to the demands of "reasonable" protestors.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a lively, quick read, available on Amazon. You decide if the passionate Swede has a point. Just be careful reading this book on a park bench in Red America.  

Climate activists, such as McKibben and his 350.org group, have made progress convincing hundreds of organizations to divest fossil-fuel stocks from their investment portfolios. Success has come mostly with universities, non profits and left-leaning states and cities. Low-hanging fruit, certainly, but if you can't convince entities sympathetic to fighting climate change -- Harvard, Yale, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Anglican Church of South Africa, New York state's pension fund, my very liberal city of Somerville -- what chance do you have with mainstream or conservative enterprises?

In the process, a natural sorting takes place between organizations who care about the crisis and those, ultimately, who don't. The same occurs on the micro level, as individuals decide whether or not to purge dirty stocks from their retirement funds. Fortunately, in recent years, renewable energy stocks have largely outperformed the likes of Exxon (oil) and Peabody (coal), so that makes the act of conscience somewhat easy to enact. 

But how, exactly, does climate divestment impact fossil-fuel corporations? Green groups contend that divestment "sends a message" and "raises awareness," and that's all well and good if hard to quantify. But does divestment hit target corporations in the pocketbook? Do their stock values suffer after an enlightened retirement fund here and a liberal arts college walks away? The money doesn't just disappear; when a green-virtuous person sells a stock, someone with a different set of scruples may buy it. The ups and downs of the stock market are a tangle of curious causes and effects, divorced in mysterious ways from the real economy.

​So the answer to the cold-hard-cash question is maybe, maybe not. 

What's certain is that private equity groups, controlling mega-billions in capital, are very invested in fossil fuel companies. They're betting on them; shorting the planet, so to speak. For a scary read, see this recent article in The New York Times detailing how private equity, by "bottom fishing for bargain prices...are keeping some of the most polluting wells, coal-burning plants and other inefficient properties in operation."

They simply don't care; private equity operates as a kind of financial Borg from Star Trek, strip mining sectors from real estate to nursing homes to fossil fuels for profit. The slim-suited mandarins in charge of these amoral organizations will not be amenable to the "think of your grandchildren" rhetoric of divestment enthusiasts. Nothing short of brute-force government regulation and taxation -- or to channel good Dr. Malm, world revolution that collapses the capitalist system once and for -- will bring such creatures to heel. 

Now that a great many corporations, even oil companies, have acknowledged the existence and danger of human-caused climate change, you'd think that progress might occur in reducing worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. And you'd be wrong. Why? Because the next step after denial in the capitalist handbook is not positive action. Oh no, there are many more ways to wriggle away from responsibility. After denial, in a profit-driven-crazy world, comes obfuscation. 

A heckuva word, obfuscation. Synonyms for the verb obfuscate are bewilder, trivialize, perplex, confuse, muddle, subvert, blur, obscure, stupefy and darken. Hooray for obfuscation, the PR hack's best friend. See campaign to defend cigarette industry and Trump press secretaries. 

Specifically, with climate change, you admit the problem but assert both the economic infeasibility of not burning fossil fuels and the intransigence of path-dependent consumers struggling to put food on their children or breakfast tables on school buses or something homey like that and then you call for the government to build really tall and really cool sea walls around coastal cities and/or perpetually seed the stratosphere with sun-blocking sulfur. What could possibly go wrong? Chemistry and engineering to the rescue! 

Or admit the problem and then trumpet a series of trivial sustainability measures. Tin-can recycling, water-stingy shrubbery, minor research project into kelp or algae as source for next-gen jet fuel, that kind of thing. At minimum have your doe-eyed sustainability officer say the word sustainable a lot. Like, in every sentence.  

Or announce that you're swearing off carbon, for sure, by some distant date. 2050 has a good, round ring to it. Eversource, my local provider of natural gas, has dared to go carbon neutral by 2030! In perusing their slick materials, you may notice that this calculation doesn't technically include the carbon-intensive product -- a fossil fuel! -- which they sell. But then again it's not their fault you buy it to keep from freezing in the winter. 

VENT: The Glasgow climate conference, known as COP-26 or the 26th annual meeting of the Conference of the Parties, is winding down. The Scottish bagpipes are playing as world leaders pledge to strengthen pledges they made at COP-21 in Paris. You know, the curve-bending, paradigm- shifting action-steps that their countries have barely begun to fulfill over the past several years. But this time, we're told, this time is different because blah, blah, blah. 

​A late-night comic called it COP OUT-26; that's pretty funny and accurate. Hey, did you know that COP-OUT pledges are 100 percent voluntary and unaccompanied by any device, financial or political, that compels or even motivates compliance? I wonder why they don't work...and did you hear the one about countries submitting pledges based on inaccurate data regarding emissions and carbon-sink capacity? It's funny how that inaccurate data always underestimates emissions and overestimates the ability of forests and wetlands to absorb carbon, much like mistakes at grocery-store checkout always seem to be overcharges...

Honesty is so old-fashioned. As is short-term planning. Mere five-year plans are for suckers and Soviets. At COP OUT-26, India has gone long by pledging to reach net-zero on ALL greenhouse emissions by 2070! In that magical year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be a sprightly 120 years old. Let's start planning the parade. By the way, global carbon dioxide emission are slated to rise five percent this year, a near-complete rebound from the Covid-related dip of 2020. So that's troubling. But there's always 2070! Yay! 

GET REAL: What, we should stop trying? Without these annual gabfests, climate change trends might be worse. Partial progress, even puny progress, is better than none. In the U.S., more than 80 percent of new power generation is now from renewable sources. And we've reduced carbon emissions 20 percent since 2005 (see below). Okay, that doesn't count the extra methane produced as electric utilities switch from coal to natural gas, and methane is actually a far more potent if less long-lasting greenhouse gas. But still, it's something, right? Just this week the U.S. joined dozens of countries in pledging really, really hard on a voluntary basis to cut methane emissions and stop ALL deforestation by 2030. Okay, ALL is clearly ridiculous, a total over-promise even for pledge-drunk pols. But an actual reduction of 25 percent wouldn't be awful.    

So, as the song goes from a certain animated Christmas classic, let's keep putting "one step in front of the other, and soon we'll be walking out the door." See you at COP OUT-27 in Egypt!​

VENT: