Editor’s note: In these dire times, we are glad to see increasing adoption of and advocacy for eco-sabotage. However, when it comes to tactics and strategy, context matters. No tactic can be judged as “effective” or “ineffective” in isolation. Goals, assumptions, and political circumstances must be considered before selecting methods.
In the political context of 2022 Britain, the actions of the eco-sabotage group “Tyre Extinguishers” may be amplifying political pressure to reduce carbon pollution and curtail the hegemony of the automobile and building a cultural acceptance for more drastic illegal actions on behalf of the planet. This type of small-scale act of minor eco-sabotage may also be useful for training and propaganda. This is the best case outcome.
A more pessimistic view is that these actions could lead to an upper-class backlash, further empower surveillance and repression against environmentalists, and put activists at risk within the legal system. However, we largely discount this interpretation, as the upper classes are already hostile to environmental action, this type of illegal action would likely lead to minimal punishments if prosecutions did take place, and police in Britain are already harassing, infiltrating, and disrupting environmental movements.
A more valid critique—made in the spirit of solidarity—is that these actions are hitting the wrong targets and are inadequate to address the crisis we are facing. Halting global warming and reversing ecological decline will likely require massive, coordinated eco-sabotage against industrial infrastructure—not just individual cars. In that sense, these actions may represent a failure of target selection when compared to the Valve Turners or the DAPL eco-saboteurs.
The Tyre Extinguishers chose their targets based on the idea that pressure on governments can halt the climate crisis and the destruction of the planet. We at Deep Green Resistance put no faith in this line of reasoning; the UK government has not defended the planet thus far, and there is no evidence that it will. Based on this divergent analysis, our goal is different. Rather than political-social, our goal is physical-material: we advocate for strategic dismantling of global industrial infrastructure.
Please share your thoughts in the comments.
By and / The Conversation
A new direct action group calling itself the Tyre Extinguishers recently sabotaged hundreds of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in various wealthy parts of London and other British cities. Under cover of darkness, activists unscrewed the valve caps on tyres, placed a bean or other pulse on the valve and then returned the cap. The tyres gently deflated.
Why activists are targeting SUVs now can tell us as much about the failures of climate policy in the UK and elsewhere as it can about the shape of environmental protest in the wake of Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain.
The “mung bean trick” for deflating tyres is tried and tested. In July 2008, the Oxford Mail reported that up to 32 SUVs were sabotaged in a similar way during nocturnal actions in three areas of the city, with anonymous notes left on the cars’ windscreens.
In Paris in 2005, activists used bicycle pumps to deflate tyres, again at night, again in affluent neighbourhoods, again leaving anonymous notes. In both cases, activists were careful to avoid causing physical damage. Now it’s the Tyre Extinguishers who are deflating SUV tyres.
In the early 2000s, SUVs were still a relative rarity. But by the end of 2010s, almost half of all cars sold each year in the US and one-third of the cars sold in Europe were SUVs.
In 2019, the International Energy Agency reported that rising SUV sales were the second-largest contributor to the increase in global CO₂ emissions between 2010 and 2018 after the power sector. If SUV drivers were a nation, they would rank seventh in the world for carbon emissions.
At the same time, the Tyre Extinguishers’ DIY model of activism has never been easier to propagate. “Want to get involved? It’s simple – grab some leaflets, grab some lentils and off you go! Instructions on our website,” chirps the group’s Twitter feed.
TYRES DEFLATED ON HUNDREDS OF SUVs OVERNIGHT IN 13+ UK LOCATIONS AS DEMANDS FOR CLIMATE ACTION GROW
SUVs ‘disarmed’ last night in Chelsea, Chiswick, Harley Street, Hampstead Heath, Notting Hill, Belgravia, Clapham, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Sheffield, Liverpool and Edinburgh. pic.twitter.com/zeUjTEdIJu— The Tyre Extinguishers (@T_Extinguishers) March 8, 2022
Changing activist strategy
Though the actions led by the Tyre Extinguishers have numerous precedents, the group’s recent appearance in the UK’s climate movement does mark a change of strategy.
Extinction Rebellion (XR), beginning in 2018, hoped to create an expanding wave of mobilisations to force governments to introduce new processes for democratically deciding the course of climate action. XR attempted to circumvent existing protest networks, with its message (at least initially) aimed at those who did not consider themselves activists.
In contrast, activists in the Tyre Extinguishers have more in common with groups that have appeared after XR, such as Insulate Britain, whose members blockaded motorways in autumn 2021 to demand government action on the country’s energy inefficient housing. These are what we might call pop-up groups, designed to draw short-term media attention to specific issues, rather than develop broad-based, long-lasting campaigns.
After a winter of planning, climate activists are likely to continue grabbing headlines throughout spring 2022. XR, along with its sister group, Just Stop Oil, threaten disruption to UK oil refineries, fuel depots and petrol stations. Their demands are for the government to stop all new investments in fossil fuel extraction.
The Tyre Extinguishers explicitly targeted a specific class of what they consider anti-social individuals. Nevertheless, that the group’s action is covert and (so far at least) sporadic is itself telling.
In his book How to Blow up a Pipeline, Lund University professor of human ecology Andreas Malm asked at what point climate activists will stop fetishising absolute non-violence and start campaigns of sabotage. Perhaps more important is the question that Malm doesn’t ask: at what point will the climate movement be strong enough to be able to carry out such a campaign, should it choose to do so?
Given the mode of action of the Tyre Extinguishers, the answer on both counts is: almost certainly not yet.
The moral economy of SUVs
For now, the Tyre Extinguishers will doubtless be sustained by red meat headlines in the right-wing press. It’s still probable, however, that the group will deflate almost as quickly as it popped up: this is, after all, what has happened with similar groups in the past.
The fact that activists are once again employing these methods speaks to the failure of climate policy. Relatively simple, technical measures taken in the early 2000s would have solved the problem of polluting SUVs before it became an issue. The introduction of more stringent vehicle emissions regulations, congestion charging, or size and weight limits, would have stopped the SUV market in its tracks.
SUVs are important because they are so much more than metal boxes. Matthew Paterson, professor of international politics at the University of Manchester, argues that the connection between freedom and driving a car has long been an ideological component of capitalism.
And Matthew Huber, professor of geography at Syracuse University in the US, reminds readers in his book Lifeblood that oil is not just an energy source. It generates ways of being which become culturally and politically embedded, encouraging individualism and materialism.
Making SUVs a focal point of climate activism advances the argument that material inequality and unfettered individual freedoms are incompatible with any serious attempt to address climate change.
And here lies the crux of the conflict. The freedom of those who can afford to drive what, where and when they want infringes on the freedoms of the majority to safely use public space, enjoy clean air, and live on a sustainable planet.
“Letting down a few tyres is a very small imposition,” says the Guardian’s George Monbiot in support of environmental activists deflating SUV tyres
“How are George’s books transported to their book stores?” asks Tory Lord Vaizey #PoliticsLive https://t.co/fXSc2K66K0 pic.twitter.com/TSij5Y52rF
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) May 26, 2022
Graeme Hayes is a reader in Political Sociology at Aston University. Oscar Berglund is a lecturer in International Public and Social Policy at the University of Bristol.
Another necessary target is commercial diesel vehicles, whose drivers act as if their trucks and tractors must be left idling when not moving.
The EV industry is another problem posing as a solution. I did the math, and if Biden’s plan to have an all-electric vehicle fleet by 2050 were met, it would require a solar power plant the size of New Mexico (replaced every 20-25 years) just to keep America’s vehicles charged.
The world must somehow learn that economic “growth” must end, and not just find “green” methods of continuing. We and the planet we call “ours” will only survive if there are far fewer people using progressively less industry, running on progressively less power.
Toward that end, we must find ways of shutting down air traffic without causing plane crashes, and of vastly curtailing global trade without sinking ships. Tying up traffic into and out of airports is one method, as are creative ways of simply scaring people away from flying. (One method might be the threat of sky-blue box kites, hovering along aircraft takeoff and landing routes. Another involves the persistent threat of laser lights directed at aircraft. And both threats can be made real without causing actual harm. Just as the threat of punishment deters crime, the threat of sabotage can curtail industry.)
We must also learn that travel to other places is not an inherently good thing, just as sleeping with multiple partners does not build good relationships. Likewise, good stewardship of the Earth requires us to make and use as much as possible locally, and that global trade global trade is not only wasteful, but increases the risk of pandemics and invasive species.
Long-term sustainability and survival require reducing population, along with an ethic and an economy that reward us for making and using as little as needed, instead of as much as we can sell.
Industrial humans are the only species that aspires to have more, instead of just enough. As a result, we are also the only one that extracts non-renewables from the Earth, produces inorganic waste, poisons the air, land, and water, has a garbage industry, and systematically causes the extinction of species — all in the name of “doing business.”
I agree with you except for one FYI: At least when I drove trucks, you had to let the engine idle for 5 minutes after you stopped driving in order to allow the turbo to wind down. Can’t say whether this is still true, but I assume that it is. Once again, the problem is that industrial society exists at all, not how long truckers leave their engines running, the latter being a minor detail in comparison.
“Halting global warming and reversing ecological decline will likely require massive, coordinated eco-sabotage against industrial infrastructure”…. editor (says it all.)
Anything other than the above will be under the control of established rule. Resistance will remain controlled by power as to the various degrees and types of resistance that can be anticipated has a predetermined response to keep established protocols, under whatever pretense of change is used for placations.
Tyre actions at best only pisses off people not part of Rev Billy’s ‘stop shopping choir’, as the owners of these suvs engage in mindless ritualistic consumption. So, I’m saying tyre maybe only made things worse?
If anything worked to preserve, respect, protect, treasure, and love all that is alive, we wouldn’t be talking now.
This brings to mind my friend who invited me to fly to DC to join him for the poor peoples campaign to protest June 18, paid for by the poor peoples campaign, so a free trip to DC. wtf? Reminds me of being as effective as the women’s march to remove trump. Needless to say I won’t join them.
What will work hasn’t been tried yet, I don’t think. I think too… if what works is dialed in we will get the best of help from our mother earth/all that lives, who loves us for caring enough. Love exchange.
Thank you for this writing to better consider options, to not waste time we don’t have anyway.
Ecotage against things like power plants won’t just cause an “upper-class backlash,” it will cause a middle- and working-class backlash as well. Think about it: you can’t convince the vast majority of people to give up even the most unnecessary things like cell phones, or cars in urban areas with good public transit. If you cut off their electricity all at once, they’ll totally freak out, because they have no idea how to live without it. If you’re just talking to radical environmentalists, you need to get out of your bubble and talk to average people also. When I was a trucker I talked to everyone I could about things like this, and I was disappointed to find that even people considered “progressive” and who were well-paid, like Longshoremen workers at ports, were unwilling to make even small sacrifices.
As I’ve been saying all along, we need to win the hearts & minds of the majority of people, probably the vast majority. Until then, all truly meaningful environmental work like DGR and Center for Biological Diversity will just be defensive actions trying to slow down the killing of the Earth and all the life here.
If you are the same Jeff I was discussing Russia with, I see that you now understand paradox. At one and the same time, you can see that the consumer items the overwhelming majority of people depend upon cannot simply be deep-sixed while understanding that the way we live is inherently in the process of collapse.
This is the great dilemma of human “civilization.” Having just watched two women in Ukraine crying with thanks that the Russians have arrived to liberate them from their eight-year occupation by Ukrainian forces, this is the REAL WORLD. In the ideal world Russia would never have had to finally listen to the pleas of the people in Luhansk and Donetsk, never had to destroy U.S. biolabs after taking the paperwork, and never had to face the possibility of Ukraine getting nuclear weapons, the three reasons they decided to undertake Operation Z.
Progress, incremental or rapid, happens only when there is something near a consensus of the public. Earth Day 1970 was a turning point that told government that things had to change. Nixon got the message and signed the most important environmental legislation which continues to function and be supported by citizens. Eco-wage proponents ave no one but themselves. Whatever they do will have no resonance except resentment and anger. Few people today, even those who support the environment, understand their role in the crisis and fewer are willing to get involved much less endure sacrifice. So eco take is just street theater, not politics, not change, just self indulgence. BUILDING the movement is what counts. Workingthrough educational institutions, the media, discussion groups, demonstrations, legislation, these are what is needed. Dont pat yourself on the back and think you are actually dismantling capitalism or industrialism. You are just wasting your time and postponing real solutions. I speak as an activist who started around 1971.
I’d really like to get your opinion of some of the ideas presented in
The ministry for the future, by kim Stanley Robinson.
There is much eco sabotage in the book, but it is targeted and the results very planned . Given its fiction, but I appreciate the many knives strategy of working with the highest echelons and all the spaces in between. The focus on laws is significant as well. The eco sabotage is part of a many thronged plan, in terms of say, air travel. Of the Davos crowd.
Carefully considered pressure points.
We found the book fascinating and well-worth a read.