Not My Words: How to Blow Up a Pipeline

possums rule and monkeywrenching is good

How to Blow Up a Pipeline is not an instruction manual. It is, instead, a philosophical reflection on the utility of violence (re: property destruction). It was a challenging read for this anabaptish, Quaker-lite, grad-school-ethics-class-psuedo-pacifist but I'm glad I did. A recent study of 20,000 people across 27 countries found that a fifth of all those under the age of 35 think it's too late to fix climate change. Here, Malm decries climate fatalism and urges imaginative action. 

"Climate fatalism is a performative contradiction. It does not passively reflect a certain distribution of probabilities but actively affirms it. Or, it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy: that which is repeatedly asserted to impossible can thereby become impossible. The more people who tell us that a radical reorientation is scarcely imaginable, the less imaginable it will be. 

Imagination is a pivotal faculty here. The climate crisis unfolds through a series of interlocked absurdities: not only is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, it is also easier, at least for some, to imagine learning to die than learning to fight, to reconcile oneself to the end of everything one holds dear than to consider militant resistance. Climate fatalism does all in its power to confirm these paralyzing absurdities." -- Andreas Malm, How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2021)

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Not My Words: Upon That Mountain

Paul scrambling the ridge of the East Face North Side of Seal Rock, Colorado

Trying to explain why we enjoy the things we enjoy is actually quite difficult. Why do I enjoy riding single-speed bicycles, climbing 5.4 multi-pitch, or eating Wendy's Baconators? Uh, because I do. How does anyone enjoy listening to The Beatles? I honestly do not know. Then again, I like music that's mostly yelling. I also enjoy reading mountaineering literature. In the excerpt below, early-20th Century alpinist Eric Shipton reflects on why he climbs mountains with a romantic eloquence far more charming and convincing than, "Uh, because I do." I thoroughly enjoy reading it and I hope you do too. 

It is impossible of course to provide an entirely satisfactory explanation for any recreation. The predominant motive in any human activity varies according to the temperament of the individual. Mountaineering provides good exercise in pleasant surroundings, a sense of satisfaction in overcoming difficulties, the joy, akin to dancing, of controlled rhythmic movement, a stimulating contact with danger, a wealth of beautiful scenery and a release from the tiresome restrictions of modern life. The expert likes to practice or display his skill. Some confess to having been drawn to climbing by a physical inferiority complex engendered by their failure at school to hit a ball straight and far. 

These motives are probably sufficient in themselves, and they certainly form the basis of many other sports. But in the deep devotion to any form of active endeavor there is generally something else we seek. In the case of mountaineering it is a kind of personal identification with the hills themselves, which comes of intimate understanding and strenuous contest and which brings with it a wealth of philosophical content. Above all, in my view, the attraction lies in the memory of those rare moments of intellectual ecstasy which occur perhaps on a mountain summit, perhaps on a glacier at dawn or in a lovely moonlit bivouac, and which appear to be the result of happy coincidence in the rhythm of mind and scene. These moments are not of course peculiar to mountaineering; they may be realized in deserts, on the sea and elsewhere. Such exaltation of feeling is achieved more often, I imagine, and in more normal circumstances by the mind of the creative artist, but for ordinary folk it would seem that it is more readily found in close contact with nature. -- Eric Shipton, Upon That Mountain (1944)

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Not My Words: How to Dress While Riding a Bike

source: instagram

I enjoy an IPA (though increasingly less so) and I like riding my bike long distances (if camping is involved) but dang, that meme goes hard. This month's "Not My Words" is short and sweet from Grant Petersen's Just Ride. Based on Goodreads reviews, it is either an angry polemic against the influence of racing on the bike industry or as a delightful curmudgeon's reflection on the simplicity of riding a bicycle. 

"In its need for special clothing, bicycle riding is less like scuba diving and more like a pickup basketball game." -- Grant Petersen, Just Ride: A Radically Practical Guide to Riding Your Bike (2012)

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Not My Words: On Staying Warm

There's something special about imbibing around a campfire with your friends on a cold winter night. After the conversation lulls and woodpile dwindles, it's time to get in your sleeping bag. The key to sleeping outside in the winter is that it is easier to stay warm than it is to get warm. Layering clothes, stacking sleeping pads, and putting a Nalgene of boiled water in your sleeping bag are all tricks of the trade. Eventually, however, you'll have to pee. Herein lies the problem: dehydration strains the body's ability to stay warm, but your body also expends energy to store urine in the bladder. Valuable energy that could otherwise be used to keep you warm. Timing is everything. See chart above. Here's a scene from one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons. I thought about it a lot while making this chart. 

-- The Simpsons, "Homer the Heretic" (Season 4; Episode 3)

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Not My Words: Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption

BLM and open-range land near Cañon City, CO 

Every January, I walk my A.P. U.S. Government students through the concept of "iron triangles." It is the policy-making relationship between congress, bureaucratic agencies, and special interest groups. E.g., an interest group will give money to a congressional campaign in return for friendly legislation and so on and so forth. Iron triangles are generally considered detrimental to democracy because the common good is ignored for special interests. Christopher Ketcham's This Land is a deep dive into the destructive relationship between corporate cattle farming, Congress, and federal agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. As one chapter's epigraph reads: "The real history of the western livestock industry is a country mile from our idealistic cowboy fantasy..." 

"Everything I thought about cows as an Easterner-come-west is wrong. They are not symbols of a noble culture of mounted herdsmen. They are not cute. They are invasive species, Bos taurus, a water-loving European animal not fit for arid climates, and their cancer-like effects on the land have not ceased. The fatal error of the [The Establishment of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument] was that it continued to allow cattle grazing. This was for political expediency, to quiet the opposition of cattle interests. There is no way to square that decision with the science of botany. How can you preserve a wild and unspoiled landscape with a ruinous alien bovine on it? You can't. It's an impossibility, an absurdity." -- Christopher Ketcham, This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West (2019)

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Not My Words: And God Said, Let There Be Marshes

Palmetto Island, Florida

I grew up in Florida surrounded by swamps, marshes, and estuaries. However much time I spend in the mountains, these grey areas between land and sea are home to me. Maybe it is because of this that I was so struck by Austen Hartke's reflection on the biblical creation poem in Genesis. The following words are his, discovered in a recent book club read. I leave them here, without comment, for you to ponder in your heart.  

"For a kid who liked order and organization, the story of creation in Genesis 1 was just about perfect. There was a place for everything, and everything was in its place. This kind of structure was something that I appreciated up until my teen years, when I began to get a better sense of the way life sometimes fell outside black-and-white boundaries. Biologically, I learned that the world isn't separated distinctly into land or sea; there are also marshes, estuaries, and coral reefs...These binaries are not meant to speak to all of reality -- they invite us into thinking about everything between and beyond... 

Instead of asking the text to define and label all that is, we can ask God to speak into the space between the words, between the biblical times and our time, and between categories we see as opposite." -- Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians (2018)

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