March 28, 2023

"property will cost us the earth"

early, half-baked musings about climate change + ownership

Dear friend—

Spring really do be sprung. This feels like the first hint of “spring” I’ve had in Pittsburgh since my freshman year in college.

In all the years since, April would come around, the end of the semester on the horizon, and we would still be weathering freezing rain and chilly, gray skies. At the slightest hint of warmth, students scrambled for the lawns near the Cathedral of Learning. We would sprawl on the grass, many (me) atop the single bath towel in their possession, for a single day or two of unseasonably 60, 70-degree days.

Then the weather would be sure we stayed humble, plunging us back into the dreary climes where we apparently belonged—only to dump summer on us like a boiling pot of water by late May.

A few weeks ago on the podcast Vibe Check, Saeed Jones mentioned that it had lately been blustery in his neck of the woods (Ohio). I realized that Pittsburgh has also been strangely windy.

It reminds me of the scene in The Holiday where Kate Winslet steps out of the house in California that first morning. Her hair blows behind her like she's in a L’Oréal commercial while Jack Black explains the Santa Ana winds to her.

In the evenings, I take Hazel out, and the street signs clang on their posts. The other night, I calmed her fears toward a trash can on its side, skittering across the sidewalk like some strange animal out of a sci-fi novel. I’ve never experienced wind like this in Pittsburgh.

Of course, weird weather always reminds me of climate change.

The International Panel on Climate Change released its “Synthesis Report for the Sixth Assessment Report” about a week ago and I avoided reading coverage about it. That is, until I came across Elizabeth Kolbert’s article on it in The New Yorker.1

Reading this article felt like deja vu. It hit all the points I’ve heard again and again. It used the same language I see almost every day. This language has twirled around websites and reports and articles for the past few years until it began to blur and hemorrhage meaning.

Running out of time. Those that contributed the least. Irreversible catastrophe. Cascading effects.

We have heard it all before, and we are hearing it again. Only this time, President Biden has recently approved the Willow Project, which will pump oil out of Alaska for decades to come. As Kolbert points out, in 2022 China approved 106 GW of coal power plants, which equal about 2 new coal plants a week.2

We (people concerned about climate change) are running in circles, with what feels like little to show for it. We are parading the same twenty phrases, and it doesn’t feel like we’re any close to saving the world from climate catastrophe.

Of course, there have been major wins and little wins that amount to major wins. The U.S. recently passed the very imperfect Inflation Reduction Act, which nevertheless pushes unprecedented funds toward climate response. Renewable energy has grown in this country at rates that exceeded many expectations.

We have a loss and damage fund, and negotiations for a global plastics treaty, and a global high seas treaty to protect our oceans. These are also imperfect, but they are a damn sight better than where we were five years ago.

And yet. And yet.

A few months ago, a climate group called Just Stop Oil gained international attention for throwing food on famous paintings.

There was a lot of hemming and hawing about whether this was a good protest tactic. People fretted about whether it lowered the credibility of the climate movement, whether it was effective, what the aims of the action were, etc. etc.

I confess, all of the discourse seemed kind of tiresome to me.

If the point was to bring awareness, it seems that ship has sailed. More people know and care about climate change than ever, and yet we still don’t have the policies and action we need to reach zero emissions and protect many from disaster.

But the protests from Just Stop Oil made me think more about what kind of actions we do need to make progress on climate change.

In The Intercept a few months ago, Christopher Ketcham wrote about a protest by Extinction Rebellion and a few other climate groups at Amsterdam's Schipol Airport. This airport caters largely to the ultrawealthy and their private jets.

The protestors slipped through fences using bolt cutters or climbed them. They rushed onto the tarmac and sat in front of private jets to prevent them from taking off.

Ketcham writes that some may think these protests ineffectual. After all, it took a mere six hours for the police to start arresting activists. The planes soon returned to the air. There was only mild delay, no prevention.

He argues for the value of the protest, though. "Actions that disrupt carbon comfort without violence or hardship are morale-building, the material from which more actions and eventually mass movements are made," Ketcham writes.

But then, there is another strain of climate activism entirely, which maintains that hardship is important for effective climate action.

In his article, Ketcham contrasts the action at Schipol, which focuses on the demand side (the overconsumption of fossil fuels), with activism directed toward the supply side.

Supply-side actions focus on “keeping it in the ground” (it being fossil fuels). Such tactics often involve disrupting the construction of pipelines, drilling, and other infrastructure.

In the book How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Andreas Malm advocates for the climate movement to take on property destruction as a means of protest, civil disobedience, and sabotage. “Keep it in the ground—or else.” (Malm makes vehemently clear that he is only talking about property destruction, not harm to other people.)

The argument goes: If the destruction of a few dozen pipelines would put a meaningful dent in fossil fuel operations, or would make it too expensive or troublesome for fossil fuel companies to do business, wouldn’t we want to at least try? If the alternative we face is planetary collapse, wouldn’t we have to try?

The case against such property damage is accepted by the wider climate movement. It would alienate potential supporters and the public. It would expose activists of marginalized identities (namely, Black and Brown folks) to police violence and our whack criminal justice system.3

But I think Malm’s argument is rooted in something we absolutely must consider, as they write: "Property will cost us the earth."

I'm reminded of the work of Antonia Malchik in her newsletter . In the book proposal she shares, she writes:

We have built a vast system of commodification that relies on the myth that nature can be bought, sold, used up, extracted, poisoned, warped, and destroyed, and it won’t have the slightest effect on us. This myth is the essence of modern ownership. [Emphasis mine.]

My takeaway from her work is this: our system and culture of ownership mentally distance us from the consequences of our actions toward nature (and toward each other). Moreover, they create a higher power (legal property rights) that supersedes any other moral consideration.4

But property rights were not handed down to us from the universe, Malchik reminds. Our political forebearers imagined and constructed them. Then they implemented them with violence and coercion. Maintaining these rights still requires violence and coercion, though often of a quieter sort.

It’s no wonder we have arrived at this moment, in our present condition, if we better protect the rights of property than the rights of any human to live in safety and security. If we prioritize the sanctity of an oil rig, a pipeline, or a fracking well over protecting others from the harms of climate change and pollution.

I say this all while knowing that (rest assured, Mom) I can’t imagine myself throwing Molotov cocktails or chaining myself to a pipeline.

But Malm’s argument, and the hemming and hawing over the painting debacle, and over any act that interferes with others’ ~right~ to enjoy their possessions, including private jets—these all beg that question: Why do we seem to value property over human lives?

And perhaps that points toward an answer to my initial question, about what action we need to make progress on climate change. Maybe that action must start, as Malchik advocates, with a reckoning and re-imagination of our relationships to land, ownership, property, conquest, colonialism, nature, community.

What do we owe to a pipeline? What do we owe to each other?

More on this to come, I think.

Thanks for reading,
—mia xx