News from a Changing Planet --#49-- What is Government For?

What makes for an effective protest? How do we answer the question of government should do for us, beginning with recent climate protests and traveling back to the first march on Washington in 1894.

What makes for an effective climate protest? Incidents in the last few years of climate activists throwing soup on famous works of art and other stunts have raised the question, which I have been thinking about again after reading an interview with Andreas Malm, a climate activist, professor, and author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline (which I reviewed a few years ago) in The New York Times Magazine.

Bon appetit, La Joconde! Credit David Cantiniaux for AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images

While Malm doesn’t actually tell readers how to blow up a pipeline, he does argue for political violence directed at private property — like fossil fuel infrastructure, but also SUVs. His position is that the crisis is so urgent and yet no one is acting like it is urgent. To him, therefore, destroying the instruments of crisis is the only way to get the necessary attention, while also getting rid of these weapons that are causing harm and destruction to millions of people around the world.