This book is a plea and a plan for a more daring form of climate politics. In the United States, the climate movement has failed in the all-important task of shutting down fossil fuels. Elected politicians – even those who support renewable energy - remain committed to the extraction of petroleum and methane. Those industries have effectively captured the federal government, converting it into a petrostate. What is to be done? Hughes proposes a widespread and sustained campaign of sabotage against fossil fuels. His strategy is risky and unlawful – but not entirely unpopular. Libertarians and other lovers of private property object to the construction of pipelines across farms and ranches. In trials of saboteurs, they could exercise the little-known power of jury nullification to make pipelines unprotectable. With trepidation, Hughes offers this last resort against the approaching climate catastrophe. Time is short, unfortunately, and we are running out of better options.

David McDermot Hughes is professor of anthropology at Rutgers University and the author of Energy without Conscience: Oil, Climate Change, and Complicity and Whiteness in Zimbabwe: Race, Landscape, and the Problem of Belonging.