Submitted by lettuceLeafer in CritiqueThis
Pro environment action is when you light a factory on fire committing some of the worst actions of pollution possible so a different company builds a factory elsewhere. Making no provable positive effect, outside long winded theoretical diatribes about economic theory that is extremely arguable. Why actually make environmentally positive actions when you could commit acts of environmental acceleration? Because environmental sabotage provably causes ridiculous amounts of pollution and most cases cannot prove any positive effect. So it would be inaccurate to call it anything other than acceleration ism.
Its almost like trying to control supply artificially almost never ever works. But why have historical precedent of ineffectiveness or no poof that your methods work stop you from becoming one of the worst individual polluters on the face of planet earth masked as living sustainably.
I do find it weird for anarchists to be the ones who think trying to force people to do what u want works. Don't get me wrong, I don't think sabotores are bad people or that I am morally against the idea. Tho take the drug war for instance. The US government has basically unlimited resources and is far far more powerful than me. And their sabotage efforts have had literally no effect on my drug use. And I have far far less resources than the US government. I mean there is an argument to be made that the drug war increased people's drug use by making the now criminals more anxious and cope with drugs and making drugs cool since they are anti authoritarian.
So I find it weird that an incredibly powerful organization can't even really curb drug use by far weaker opponents. So I would think sabotage done by far weaker oponents against way stronger opponents would be less effective than the drug war. This is especially important bc sabotage is an action where people put their lives on the line so I would think u would want to be sure that it overall helped. But it's hard af to predict.
Let's say for example a coal plant that burns coal to make energy to mine Bitcoin and run a factory to make bomber planes. Something the world would be far better off without. One prediction could be the coal plant gets destroyed but even if they rebuild the days it was gone they weren't polluting for X amount of days so overall it was a gain.
But I think it could almost be a better prediction that pollution would be far worse. The US Millitary views it's production lines as incredibly essential and will pay lots of money to make production secure. They view that if they need it they should overproduce and hoard as a shortage causes soldiers to die and worst of all they won't be able to do imperialism as good.
So after the sabotage they realize "oh our production is more unstable so we will have to increase production for the same level of output". So they build 3 coal power plants and triple the output of the old factory. So that if even 2 plants were destroyed they have enough and in case of all 3 being destroyed they built up a surplus.
Idk, I just think sabotage doesn't make much sense bc I like u am an anarchist when told what to do by the government and threatened with punishment I still do what I want but just spend effort to just do what I want and not let the government prevent my behavior. I don't see why this logic wouldn't apply to corporations. Anarchists are way less threatening than the feds and bussinesses have way more ability to ignore anarchist attacks. So I think this anarchist logic would be even more present for corporations.
So I think it's nearly impossible to predict the outcome so sabotage doesn't make sense from a individual perspective. In like a ML guerilla campaign I think there could be an argument bc it weakens the enemy temporarily and will allow a eco friendly ML state to then stop pollution.But I think from a anarchists perspective where individual actions don't have nearly that large of scope I can't see a way where u could exact enough control to have a probable positive effect.
Seems especially silly when direct action can be done that u could prove works such as tree plantjng or creating a healthy microclimate. Or as a larger operation to smash supply by curbing demand. Done so by making people living with less electricity more desirable for people than using electricity or provide a better alternative to using cars by enabling people to quite working on a massive scale to stop commuting.Which is sure far harder but if predictions are wrong the effect is nothing rather than negative.
Idk, I guess my argument is mostly that if I pretend to be an oil billionaire or whatever making fuck tons of money polluting an some sabotours start destroying my stuff I think polluting less and making less money would be one of my reactions tho not the only reaction I would have or reaction I would most likely to do.
I have been struggling to fully explain my position so maybe I can use this as a jumping off point to start a dialogue and maybe I can explain my position better and people can tell me where my logic is bad.
/u/SnowCode U asked me about my views on sabotage a while back and my answer took forever to write and I never quite wrote a good enough answer. Hopefully this will give u a decent idea.
stckyfngr wrote
It needs to be taken into account that at some point, it won't be a question of IF sabotage should take place, but it will a question of HOW sabotage should take place. How to get rid of the buildings, machinery, AND people responsible for the current and coming damage.
There is no guarantee that anything done to mitigate climate disaster, including direct action, will be successful. This type of action would probably be considered a last resort, something people may think about when everything around them is already on fire.
Whos to say that if enough people (the right people) find themselves in this situation together, they couldnt think of sabotage methods that also mitigate side effects? Even further, would anyone even care about possible side effects of sabotage if climate destruction was impending and inevitable, literally happening in front of their eyes?
I dont see how anarchists are trying to force anyone to do anything. It's simple, when people are backed into a corner, some choose to fight.
You can go green and toss all the seed bombs you want, its not going to stop capitalism, especially when the whole world around you is in fire.
I look forward to any response you may have.