Andreas Malm

Andreas Malm (born 1976 or 1977)^[1] is a Swedish^[2] author and an associate professor of human ecology at Lund University.^[3][4] He is on the editorial board of the academic journal Historical Materialism,^[5] and has been described as a Marxist.^[6] Naomi Klein, who quoted Malm in her book This Changes Everything, has called him "one of the most original thinkers on the subject" of climate change.^[7]

Andreas Malm
Malm giving a lecture at Code Rood Action Camp 2018 in Groningen
Born	1976 or 1977 (age 47–48)[1] Mölndal, Sweden
Occupation(s)	Author, professor
Employer	Lund University
Title	Associate professor
Movement	Marxism

Career

In 2010, Malm joined the Socialistiska Partiet; he had been in contact with the party since attending a summer camp it ran in 1997.^[8]

In 2014, Malm successfully defended his thesis Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam-Power in the British Cotton Industry, c. 1825–1848, and the Roots of Global Warming, and obtained a PhD from Lund University.^[9] He released a reworked version of his thesis as Fossil Capital, published by Verso Books.^[10]

During a conference at Stockholm University in December 2023 on Palestinian resistance, Malm celebrated the "heroic armed resistance in Gaza". He thus expressed his “astonishment” and his “tears of joy” following the Hamas attacks against Israel on 7 October 2023.^[11][12][13]

Malm has authored several books and is a contributor to the magazine Jacobin.^[3][14] In his book How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire, published in 2021, he argued that sabotage and property damage are logical components of the movement against human-caused climate change.^[15] The book was adapted into the 2022 narrative film How to Blow Up a Pipeline.^[16]

Psychoanalytic understanding of the climate crisis

     On the far right, you see this aggressive defense of cars and fossil fuels that verges on a desire for destruction, ... Denial is as central to the development of the climate crisis as the greenhouse effect.

—Andreas Malm in January, 2024^[17]

In The Guardian, Brett Christophers wrote that Malm's research suggests that manufacturers during the Industrial Revolution switched from water power to steam not because steam was cheaper but because it was more profitable. In particular, steam allowed prime movers to be near cheap labor rather than bound to suitable waterways.^[18]

In September 2021, Malm was a guest on The New Yorker Radio Hour, where he echoed the central claim of How to Blow Up a Pipeline by advocating that the climate movement use sabotage as a tactic and embrace a diversity of tactics.^[19]

Books

• Iran on the Brink: Rising Workers and Threats of War, written with Shora Esmailian, published 2007 by Pluto Press^[20]
• Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming, published 2016 by Verso Books and awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize^[10][21]
• The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World, published 2017 by Verso Books^[22]
• Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century, published 2020 by Verso Books^[23]
• How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire, published 2021 by Verso Books^[24]
• White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism, written with The Zetkin Collective, published 2021 by Verso Books^[25]
• The Long Heat: Climate politics when it's too late, published 2025 by Verso Books.
• The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth, published 2025 by Verso Books.^[26]

See also

• Capitalocene – Geologic era defined by capitalism
• Politics of climate change – Interaction of societies and governments with current climate change