29 September—Greta Thunberg is an obnoxious, objectionable Swedish adolescent who has come to prominence by bitching with well-rehearsed emotional fervor about global warming and the people and industries that, she insists, cause it. She’s also done quite well for herself in publicity, having, among other things, been Time magazine’s person of the year. Like Hitler, Stalin, Putin, Trump, and Clinton (Willy, not Hilly). And she’s not hurting in material benefits, like the Tesla electric car Arnold Schwarzenegger gave her. (It was the cheap one. And, lucky girl, gifts aren’t taxed in Sweden.)

Greta probably took histrionic lessons from the same expert who must have coached Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh for his hammy, emotionally indignant performance at the U.S. Senate hearing that confirmed him for his lifetime cushion on the SCOTUS bench.

Greta Thunberg’s bag is stirring people up to demonstrate, protest, strike, and do non-violent, non-destructive things she hopes will keep the planet from getting too hot. Bless her little heart and good luck to her and them. Nothing wrong with civil disobedience, really, just as long as Greta’s groupies keep it civil. But the reality is that peaceful demonstrations, protests, strikes, non-violence, and non-destruction aren’t worth the time, energy, and expense they require. Kind of like legislative hearings.

What’s proven more effective, unfortunately, as we see time after time, is violence and destruction. Better press coverage and more attention, at the very least. And fear in the corridors of power. That’s why wars work, for better or worse, when reason and diplomacy fail. And that’s why Andreas Malm, a Swede like Greta Thunberg but a semi-grown-up professor of human ecology (whatever that is), wants the environmental movement to forgo nonviolence and instead consider what he calls “intelligent sabotage.”

Andreas Malm is an avowed Trotskyist who happens to be a climate-change extremist. Or is he a climate-change extremist who happens to be a Trotskyist? No matter, because his book, “How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire,” espouses nasty, other-than-peaceful means to fight global warming.

While Malm neither dismisses peaceful demonstrations nor condones “hurting people,” he insists that destroying private property, like construction equipment and pipelines, isn’t “morally illegitimate.” Pre-emptive strike; proactive rather than reactive, as he’d have it. He’s proud to have sabotaged SUV tires and coal mines. He is a Trotskyist, after all. And the end justifies the means. Oh, wait: that’s Nechayev’s claim to fame, not Trotsky’s.

Amazon.com calls Andreas Malm’s book a “lyrical manifesto.” Wow! Would Amazon’s reviewer call Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” lyrical? One reader calls it “lunacy at its finest” and Malm “a wannabe celebrity pursuing acclaim for destroying peoples livelihoods [who will] be blowing up the book very soon.” Another reader calls it a “motivational tool to shake environmental activists out of an attachment to respectability politics.”

Unhappily, a number of Amazon.com readers’ reviews say Malm’s book should be banned. But at least none say it should be burned. Probably because burning produces carbon dioxide and that causes global warming . . .