How to Blow Up a Pipeline asks you to think about what a reasonable response to climate change looks like. Released this month, the movie follows a grindhouse, Ocean’s Eleven–type heist in which a group of people fed up with fossil fuels plan to place homemade bombs at key points along a pipeline in Texas.
The pace and editing at the beginning of the film builds a momentum that propels the viewer into the stories of the main characters. Scenes are punctuated with doors slamming and shoes dropping as a group of activists prepares to travel out into the arid Texas desert.
The group slowly starts to take shape.
The ringleader is a young college dropout, Xochitl, who just lost her mother in a heat wave. She has a friend from college, Shawn, a clean-cut young student who is disillusioned with the slow pace of institutional action against climate change. Xochitl’s best friend is Theo, who has leukemia; she grew up near an oil refinery — the apparent cause of her cancer — and describes dancing in acid rain when she was young. Theo’s girlfriend, Alisha, works in a local soup kitchen, and is the voice of skepticism in the group as Xochitl develops their plan.
Xochitl also draws in people from outside her social circle. Michael is a young, Indigenous bomb expert from North Dakota, who picks fights and is fed up with the lack of opportunity surrounding him. Dwayne is a Texas local who joins up with the group after the federal government takes the land that has belonged to his family for generations, the same land that the pipeline in question is now occupying. With a kid on the way and court fees piling up due to fighting the federal government on a legal level, he scouts the area for the best places to kick the government where it really hurts. Finally, there are Rowan and Logan, a pair of young disruptors who are horny for each other and have a history of getting into trouble. Xochitl collects friends, internet strangers, and people from the fringe of society in her effort to broadcast a message that’s hard to ignore. It’s a heist movie in which everyone involved has banded together for a different reason, and throughout the film layers peel back to reveal how deep (or not) each person’s commitment is to the cause.
The film stands firm in its sympathetic framing of the actions of the group, but it is also a revenge movie. Xochitl lost her mom to cancer, and is now losing her best friend, Theo; Micheal is dealing with disillusionment in the face of colonialism; Dwayne wants his family’s land back; and Rowan and Logan simply have an anarchic modus operandi. The primal rage felt by these people comes from witnessing the havoc wrought by the overuse of fossil fuels—seeing the health of loved ones torn asunder by our collective reliance on the energy resources that are slowly heating up our planet. They manifest the frustration and rage of people who have no other options.
The mission of blowing up the pipeline is personal for the characters in ways that might resonate for viewers as well. Personally, as I look around at the effects of climate change, what I see influences my outlook on life and even my desire to have children. What does the future look like for my loved ones and potential children in the face of such overwhelming circumstances? Having experienced these feelings myself gave me a sense of connection to the characters.
What does the future look like for my loved ones and potential children in the face of such overwhelming circumstances?
The film also makes us think about how climate change intersects with class. People struggling to make ends meet can’t just move away from their homes when they become uninhabitable. As the world gets hotter and more dangerous, those with fewer resources are the ones who will be most affected. But these upheavals will come for everyone eventually.
The film maintains snappy dialogue and quick pacing, but it also takes the time to slow down and reveal the details of the characters’ lives. In this way, we see the effects of climate change from many different perspectives, making it hard to ignore the experiences of those most impacted.
Anticipating what many viewers might be thinking, the film presents arguments against eco-terrorism. Alisha, Theo’s partner, says that damaging the pipeline will spike gas prices for low income people, but Xochitl justifies the decision: We have to do something. Alisha also argues that they could be spending their time and energy doing important community work, such as working at a soup kitchen like she does. Why not do more building up than tearing down? Xochitl encounters similar arguments in the scenes set during her time in college. When she says there is no time to sit around and wait for institutional change on climate change, she is met with shrugs. These are big systems, others at the college tell her, and most move at a snail’s pace. She is told that change is slow.
The group Xochitl goes on to assemble is made up of radicals who are looking at the clock, comparing the pace of change to the time we have left to avert catastrophe, and realizing that the math isn’t adding up. This is especially clear when seen through the lens of protagonists who are people of color, since they represent the communities that will be most harmed. To judge the actions of the group too harshly is to disengage with the justifiable rage that blooms in us as we see our planet slowly being squeezed of oil and sold back to us at a premium.
Taylar Dawn Stagner is a writer and audio journalist who’s an editorial intern for the Indigenous Affairs desk at HCN. She’s Arapaho and Shoshone and writes about racism, rurality, and gender. Email her at taylar.stagner@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
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