Of course they want you to go out and blow up a pipeline
They are pretty much telling you to do it
The indie production company Neon Films last week released a movie called “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.” The title seems pretty self-explanatory. The movie focuses on a group of young climate activists who decide to blow up an oil pipeline in the middle of Texas as an act of radical environmentalism. The movie doesn’t actually provide any direct instructions on how to blow up a pipeline, but it does offer a kind of overview of sorts, like a survey course or a Buzzfeed article, and of course it makes the whole concept of eco-terrorism into a sympathetic act of self-defense. Because climate change is threatening the planet or whatever.
In any event, it does seem obvious that the filmmakers want you to actually go out and blow up a pipeline. I don’t think it’s being uncharitable to conclude that. The director told the Los Angeles Times: “We didn’t necessarily want the movie to be directing the audience to go out and take a particular action.” This is extremely equivocal language, an immediate red flag. The minute someone tells you “I don’t necessarily want that,” you can be reasonably sure that they do, in fact, want that thing. He told NPR that he hopes the film inspires people to ask “what kind of tactics are necessary and defensible to prevent a climate apocalypse.” Folks, if I made a movie called “How to Bomb an Abortion Clinic,” and I said that I hoped it inspired people to consider “what kind of tactics are necessary and defensible to prevent the mass murder of infants,” I think you could divine my intent pretty clearly. I mean, look, if you don’t want people to blow up a pipeline after seeing your movie “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” you tell them that directly. “Please don’t blow up a pipeline, this is just a movie.” It’s that easy. Refusing to say that is pretty indicative of what you want.
Conservative viewpoints, of course, are generally subject to aggressive oversight, criticism and censorship in our culture, while progressive and far-left voices are given broad latitude to say pretty much whatever they want. I mean, they made a movie calling for the destruction of critical, lifesaving infrastructure, and it’s pretty much being feted. But beyond mere political commentary, it is worth pointing out that the climate change movement really does seem to be escalating in a way that purports considerable chaos and destruction in the near future. These folks really are convinced that the world is on the verge of ending, that massive tidal waves and 100-year droughts are going to overtake the entire planet and kill billions of people unless we all switch to wind power and stop eating meat. These activists are scared, they’re desperate, and most of them have chosen to forego the sort of grounding institutions—family, church, community, civic participation—that might have mitigated this kind of low-information mania in the past. Right now the lone decision facing them honestly seems to be: Blow up a pipeline or die.
The destruction of our energy network, of course, would bring about far more deaths than “climate change” could ever hope to. Energy is life, and right now energy is fossil fuels. All of the things that have made our lives safer, cleaner and longer-lasting are powered by fossil fuel energy: The air conditioning that protect us from freezing in the winter and cooking to death in the summer; the refrigerators that keep our food from spoiling and making us sick; the cars and trucks that bring us fresh food and safe medicine; the power for the tools our plumbers uses to repair the pipes that carry our bodily waste away from our houses; the miracle equipment at hospitals around the country that helps save our lives in the event of life-threatening emergencies; all of it underwritten by readily available, easily accessible, reasonably affordable electricity. Try and switch us exclusively to as-of-yet unreliable, expensive, intermittently unavailable, prone-to-blackout new energy technology, and the deaths will pile up to levels you could scarcely believe.
The ultimate problem with modern climate activists is they just don’t want to wait; they are essentially bratty children who don’t want to eat their dinner before they have dessert. We’re going to have to switch to next-gen energy technology eventually. This is obvious. The fossil fuels will run out one day; they’re not making any more of them. But we’re not there yet, and rushing the process is just going to lead to catastrophe, in much the same way that, say, it would have been a disaster to force every horse owner in the country to immediately buy a Model T in 1908. You can’t push this sort of thing too fast; you will fail and you will kill lots of people while you’re at it.
But here we have a movie with a mainstream cinematic release, urging people to proactively destroy the very thing keeping us alive. Do you think it ends here? Do you think this will de-escalate? Climate hysteria is refining itself into something far more dynamic and motivated, a movement of action rather than mere dialogue. Blowing up the pipelines is only the beginning, though it will all, inevitably, end the same.