Reviews and Comments

I made a video review: sunbeam.city/system/media_attachments/files/109/003/050/194/362/756/original/0d0cad431b57cf3a.mp4

This book looks at the work that goes into ecosystem restoration, exploring case studies from across north-central china, the Sinai, Yemen, New Mexico, Spain, and many others. What's striking is that the work is not simply planting trees or protecting animal species. Each story is deeply focused on the humans who need to come together, collaborate, resolve conflicts or plan for a complex future.

This reflects the reality that humans are not "outside" of nature, or separate from it. We are deeply enmeshed in our ecosystems, and the damage we see to the world stems from our failure to recognize that fact. In many places, our conflicts over water (see the story about New Mexico) as much result from our own land management policies as the broader trends of climate change. I really appreciated book's focus on the humans involved in ecosystem restoration, looking at the movements to preserve reindeer herds in Norway and regenerative agriculture in Hawaii as culural, justice-oriented campaigns.

On a personal note, it was a pleasant surprise to see my organization's partners Commonland in The Netherlands and AlVelAl in Spain featured in the final chapter. A principle character featured is Dietmar Roth, a very kind German man who was an adopted son of his community in Vélez Blanco Spain. Dietmar generously spent several hours with me early on when I started working in my conservation-oriented job. He passed away in July 2021, and it was pleasant to see the work he loved held up as an example in the story.

Read the book!

Ai Weiwei's memoir is half a biography of his father, a poet and intellectual who lived through the communist revolution in China, and suffered in exile during the Cultural Revolution. Weiwei's reflections overlap with his father's, since as a child he lived in the same dark home. He describes how he grew into art, and gradually came to critique the government, and became an artist dissident with a large and vocal following. Ai Weiwei's 81 days in detention and four years of house arrest are a major subject of focus.

In 1984, George Orwell depicts his protagonist sparring with his captor, the intellectual and elloquent party leader, O'brien. In that exchange, Winston is poorly equiped to articulate principles of freedom, having grown up with only a dim understanding of what life outside the party could be, while O'brien runs circles around him, confounding him with twisted logic and the hopelessness of trying to find an objective reality. Ai Weiwei's real-life conversations with his interregators feel somewhat similar, in that many of his captors appear to be well educated (citing Longfellow and other literary figures) and challenge the underpinning's of Ai's work, but Ai Weiwei was much better equiped to defend himself, articulate his ideas and critique the state's abuse of power. I recall Wael Ghonim's memoir shared a similar theme in his own questioning by authorities in Cairo.

That these real-life dissedents grew up under harsh government control and still more than possess the tools to dissent is heartening.

Andreas Malm has a simple thesis - that property violence is both necessary and justified in the struggle to end fossil fuels. Much of the book is spent critiquing Gandhi as well as Chenoweth and Stephan, heroes of my youth and my early peacebuilding career, respectively.

Malm argues that a violent wing to a broader movement is critical for that movement to achieve its objectives - that every Martin needs his Malcolm, etc. And he actively disputes the research and thesis of Chenoweth and Stephan's signature text, "Why Civil Resistance Works". He characterizes insistence on non-violence as the stance of the privileged who will bear the least of the burden as we descend into climate chaos.

As I write this, the U.S. Congress has passed an historic climate bill, investing $369 billion to overhaul our energy and transportation sectors. Through a combination of carrots and regulatory sticks, analysts predict that U.S. emissions may fall as low as 50% our 2005 level by 2050, a critical milestone if we are to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius. This legislation was made possible through the non-violent mobilization of the climate movement.. Yet the flaws of the bill, and its insistence on the continued operation of fossil fuel infrastructure, means that many will continue to suffer from the harms produced by these deadly fuel sources.

It would seem, then, that if non-violence can claim to have made significant progress, it can not yet claim to have achieved total victory. And the reader still must ask - how best to protect frontline and fenceline communities? Is it justifiable to destroy fossil fuel property in the pursuit of justice?

I think it is critical that we, as citizens, increase the cost for fossil fuel companies to build infrastructure. Mechanisms ranging from legal tools for challenging construction to civil disobedience would increase the cost for construction. Ultimately, while I still believe that non-violent approaches can grow the movement and achieve results, the arguments by Malm are thought provoking, and deeply unsettling.