Law enforcement officials warn of ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ movie

Law enforcement agencies across the country are concerned that environmental thrillers How to blow up a pipeline will inspire actual attacks on fossil fuel infrastructure.

According to government documents obtained by , at least 35 letters have been sent out about the film by 23 different state and federal agencies Rolling Stone.

“The film has the potential to inspire threat actors to target oil and gas infrastructure with explosives or other destructive devices,” said an April 6 bulletin from the FBI’s Directorate of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

“The consensus between law enforcement and the private oil sector is that this film could motivate attacks or disruptions to critical infrastructure across the country,” added an ATF warning.

While authorities didn’t warn of a specific threat, the film’s content, which shows a group of young activists attempting to sabotage a Texas oil pipeline, clearly alarmed them.

Daniel Goldhaber, who directed the film, tells the story Rolling Stone The film is “fiction that addresses one of the real world’s most pressing issues by telling a story about eight characters who believe that destroying an oil pipeline is an act of self-defense. That audiences have connected so strongly with it only demonstrates the gravity of the climate crisis and reinforces our urgent need to address it.”

How to blow up a pipeline is loosely based on a 2021 book of the same name by Andreas Malm, a Swedish professor of human ecology and climate activist.

The book is not a literal guide to attacking oil pipelines, but rather an argument that the urgency of the climate crisis requires outright sabotage of fossil fuel infrastructure because governments have failed to heed peaceful grass-roots demands for more climate action.

“To say that the signals have fallen on deaf ears among the world’s ruling classes would be an understatement. If these classes ever had any senses, they lost them all,” he writes in the book.

Infrastructure attacks have occurred in recent months.

Vandalism at four Washington state power plants cut power to thousands of people in December, while substations in North Carolina and Oregon were also attacked.