Moral Hazards

“Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.” - H.L. Mencken

Moral justifications for the use of force against enemies date back thousands of years. Religious fundamentalists have found justifications for war in their most sacred texts for thousands of years.

Religious wars largely faded from modern history around the time science began to better explain the world. In his 1882 work The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous declaration “God is dead” is often misunderstood as celebratory, without context or concern for what would fill the void that would inevitably result from The Enlightenment in Europe.

Without Judeo-Christian religion as a moral guidepost, Nietzsche presciently asked about his proposition that “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”:

“Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

What would go on to fill that void would prove Nietzsche’s worry well founded. The worst examples of human misery in the decades hence would make the oft-questioned morality of practical modern religion seem wholesome and quaint by comparison.

One year after Nietzsche posed these existential philosophical questions, a pseudo-scientific theory under a moral pretense was gaining popularity in Europe and America. An overly liberal, incorrect, and morally repugnant reading of Charles Darwin’s work led Francis Galton (a cousin of Darwin’s) to endorse the new theory as “a virile creed, full of hopefulness.” 

In America, this new doctrine was part of the discourse in prestigious publications like Scientific American, and was enthusiastically supported by Theodore Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and many other prominent business and thought leaders of the era.

The theory of eugenics posited that many social ills were a result of the wrong sorts of “feeble-minded” people reproducing, and constraining or eliminating their ability to do so was a moral action for society. Its human toll in the U.S. was “limited” to forced confinement in mental institutions and forced sterilizations of an uncomfortable number of American citizens.

Incredibly, these actions were passed into law in more than 30 states in the U.S., resulting in the compelled sterilization of an estimated sixty to seventy thousand Americans in the twentieth century. While many state laws were struck down by courts over the ensuing years, others remained well into the latter half of the century. Oregon is thought to be the location of the last legal forced sterilization in the U.S., in 1981.

Eugenics turned darker in Europe, particularly in Germany in the 1930s. About sixty years after Nietzsche made his famous declaration, his worst fears manifested themselves in the atrocities of Nazi Germany and Soviet Communism, ideologies hiding a metastatic faux morality that left a human carnage of nearly 100 million dead in its wake in the twentieth century. Only Allied Forces, at great personal sacrifice and economic toll, fiercely fighting in the name of actual morality, would extinguish the eugenically “moral” Nazi holocaust.

Nietzsche’s Worst Fear | Auschwitz

Fossil fuels were central to the Allies’ moral and military victory. Starving German and Japanese forces of the fuel necessary to support their aggression is part of this history. The ability to obtain, store and transport dense energy is critical to national security. And modern Western life.

Geopolitics and energy figure largely in the first European ground war since World War II. Vladimir Putin recognized that Europe’s self-inflicted, renewable energy-driven dependence on Russian natural gave him political leverage. He invaded Ukraine under a dubious cover of moral authority on behalf of ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s eastern and southern oblasts.

Seven months later, the Nordstream pipeline became a pawn in a new geopolitical paradigm – attacking key energy infrastructure - an ominous development we hoped was a one-off regional anomaly unique to Russia’s invasion. Who conducted the sabotage (almost certainly a state-sponsored actor) is still known only to the perpetrators.

Unfortunately, blowing up pipelines in military conflict is not the only concern in terms of politics, ideology, and energy infrastructure in western nations. A new threat from within is emerging.

In 2021, Swedish Professor of Human Ecology and devout Eco-Marxist Andreas Malm published a book titled How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning How to Fight in a World On Fire. The fact that a sect of environmentalism was openly advocating for eco-terrorism as a moral imperative due to the “existential crisis” of climate change concerned us (but did not surprise us). What did surprise us were the reviews and reception the book received from US and European legacy media publications, some politicians and “thought leaders” who should know better than to condone such absurdity (but can reliably be counted on to do such things when “the planet is at stake”).

In the Los Angeles Review of Books journalist Wen Stephenson praised the work and Malm’s tactics, describing them as “erudite and, above all, morally serious."  In the same publication, reviewer Scott W. Stern commented Malm "makes a stirring moral case for the necessity of escalation.”  The escalation they were tacitly endorsing included, in Malm’s words:

“For a start: announce and enforce the prohibition (on new fossil fuel development). Damage and destroy new CO2-emitting devices. Put them out of commission, pick them apart, demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep on investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed.”

Many hoped the dangerous provocation would quietly fade away. Understanding the forces and motivations on the ideological battleground, we were not optimistic.

“Sustainable” Eco-Marxist Andreas Malm | Wikipedia

Early last month, two weeks before “Earth Day”, How to Blow Up a Pipeline was released in the U.S. as an independent film. Hollywood’s telling incarnation of Malm’s Eco-Marxist “moral” imperative unsurprisingly takes place in west Texas, in the Permian basin oil fields. (We read/watch these things so you don’t have to.)

We struggled with whether to write this piece for fear of inadvertently drawing attention to the film and causing a Streisand Effect that would benefit director Daniel Goldhaber, the film’s investors, or the misanthropic ideology it glorifies. But we decided the risk was worth the benefit of exposing the underlying message. (And, judging by the film’s first five weeks’ revenues, we deemed the risk less than miniscule).

The film’s plot, characters, storyline, and narrative were curated to form an intersectionality of all the movement’s typical check boxes. All of them have been harmed in some way by fossil fuels and are angry. Terribly angry.

Three of the female characters, including the main “protagonist” Xochitl, grew up near a refinery in Long Beach, California. The team’s bombmaker is a Native American from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota. A hardscrabble blue collar west Texan has had his family land “taken” by eminent domain (Texas law gives broad eminent domain rights for pipeline projects).

Only one character expresses any real reservations about the plot. A flashback near the film’s end provides a window into the mind of Malm and Eco-Marxists everywhere in modern Western civilization. “Alesha” objects to the use of violence and tells the film’s main “protagonist” “Xochitl” that current non-violent efforts are working. The dialogue reveals the ideology and its moral inversion (emphasis ours):

Xochitl: “That work is important and it’s not fucking working. You need leverage; the flashy shit scares people.”

Alesha: “So you scare some oil companies but you’re really going to fuck over poor people”

Xochitl: “Pay more for gas now or choke to death on hot air in 5 years!”

Alesha: “Who are you to decide? You’re not God, Xoci, you don’t get to decide how people live and die!”

Xochitl: (for the moral win…): “Better me than the people that are currently doing that.”

And there you have it: better I should play God than the people I believe are doing so and have decided are morally repugnant.

Who Shall Live? | iStock

We will not spoil the entire film and are anything but film critics. But key elements of Malm’s manifesto are incorporated into a video made by Xochitl that is programmed to be released on social media moments after her arrest (emphasis ours):

“Destroying this property was a last resort. If we want to survive, we must damage and dismantle CO2 emitting devices, demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let those who profit from mass death know their properties will be trashed. They will defame us and claim this was violence or vandalism, but this was justified; this was an act of self-defense.

This is the slippery slope of morally justified aggression. Nietzsche cautioned us against playing God simply for having gained an understanding of science. (Or, in this case, not.)

In his book The Parasitic Mind, Canadian evolutionary psychology professor Gad Saad describes the concept of “idea pathogens.” In the book, Saad states: 

“These pathogens are composed of thought patterns, belief systems, attitudes, and mindsets that hinder a person’s ability to use reason, critical thinking, and science to navigate the world.”

Unfortunately, violence against critical energy infrastructure to advance hard-core political ideology is not a uniquely Eco-Marxist idea pathogen. Andreas Malm and his misanthropic band of (very angry) planet-saving eco-terrorists have company on the opposing side. As it turns out, a credible right-wing analogue exists to match this ideological nihilism hiding behind a moral shield.

In late February, the U.S. Department of Justice announced three right-wing men ages 20-24 had plead guilty to conspiring to provide material support to terrorists in relation to a plot to destroy regional U.S. energy facilities – electric substations. The announcement noted the trio had spray painted a swastika under a bridge in Columbus, OH where they were plotting their attacks.

According to the DOJ Press Release, “As part of the conspiracy, each defendant was assigned a substation in a different region of the United States. The plan was to attack the substations, or power grids, with powerful rifles. The defendants believed their plan would cost the government millions of dollars and cause unrest for Americans in the region. They had conversations about how the possibility of the power being out for many months could cause war, even a race war, and induce the next Great Depression.”

Data provided by utilities to the U.S. Department of Energy regarding “Electric Disturbance Events” shows an increase in reported events described as “Vandalism” or “Actual Physical Attacks” over the last four years:

Data Source: U.S. Department of Energy

Major shifts in democratic societies (and Constitutional Republics) rarely occur without extensive political struggle and tension between opposing sides. That tension is a healthy and necessary aspect of progress and has been a core element in every major social, economic, political, and environmental advancement in modern western civilization.

But in the post-modern world, where the internet and social media exist simultaneously as a powerful tool for human interaction and as a political weapon, the spread of ideological rot is a force multiplier for violence, fear, and terrorism. Add in a twisted moral justification for nihilism and direct it at foundations of modern living – energy – and the radicals at both ends of the political spectrum are playing a new game that has no precedent in modern Western history.

It would be unwise to underestimate the potential consequences that violence by disaffected, angry, nihilistic radicals on both sides of the political debate could have on western civilization if they turn their “moral” outrage on energy infrastructure. We can see such a degradation of order quickly descending into a downward economic and civilizational spiral none of us would recognize and only the perpetrators would choose. The mentality of “burning it all down,” whether the object of one’s outrage is fossil fuels/climate change or centrally-planned Statism, is a less-than zero sum game and high-speed road to hell for everyone.

Tomato soup on a Van Gogh is one matter. Energy as a political weapon – sabotaging, blowing up critical infrastructure under a faux moral justification - is an entirely different proposition for civilized society. On a recent Decouple podcast, host Chris Keefer and guest Emmet Penney (author of daily energy update Grid Brief and host of the Nuclear Barbarians podcast) discussed Penney’s recent film review of How to Blow Up a Pipeline in Compact Magazine. Describing Malm’s book, the film, and the Eco-Marxist terrorist idea pathogen, Penney stated (lightly edited, emphasis ours):

“What we have is what Nick Land called Transcendental Miserablism. It’s the idea that neo-Marxists on the Left have basically given up on seizing the means of production and freeing them for even greater expansion of our abilities, and more or less resent capitalism for winning. Capitalism represents everything that they don’t like. And they’re like, I don’t want growth anyway. I didn’t want this anyway. The polar bears are dying and there’s nothing that I can do. Which eventually cankers over the years into a soft nihilism. It doesn’t really matter if we’re breaking the law, it doesn’t really matter if this plan isn’t going to work, because I feel terrible, and this is in self-defense. Its main justification is, if we don’t stop using fossil fuels right now, billions of people will die and we’re doing this in self-defense.”

Right-wing radicals who shoot electricity substations will put the lights out for many conservatives. Left-wing Eco-Marxists who blow up pipelines will cause gas, electricity, and other prices to increase for the very constituents they pretend to represent. Neither understand the practical consequences of their nihilistic “morality.”  (It is doubtful they would change their actions even if they did).

Our favorite Substack writer, Doomberg, opened a recent piece on the absurdity of the current Administration’s attempt to convert U.S. military vehicles to electric with the following (emphasis ours):

“Incompetence or malice? This question is consistently posed to us by readers responding to the staggering idiocy of our political class, especially as it pertains to energy policy. Perverse though it might sound, many would be more comfortable if the unworkable policies and unscientific nonsense emanating from our elected officials were part of some dark and purposeful criminal conspiracy.”

The excellent post takes the proper view that such policies are born out of incompetence more than malice. But that question has troubled us as professionals in the environmental industry for two decades as we have watched the pieces on the environmental and energy political chess board move about.

Is it ignorance or is it malevolence? In our view it is both, and we will have much more to say about it in the future.

Is it more ignorance or malevolence that is driving Eco-Marxist promoters of How to Blow Up a Pipeline and their acolytes? We think their words and actions speak for themselves.

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