The longest crude oil pipeline in the world is to be built in Uganda and Tanzania for 10 billion dollars. Climate activist Luisa Neubauer is against the project. In a video, she jokes about sabotaging it – and points to a book as justification.
Climate activist Luisa Neubauer caused a stir and irritation with a joke about eco-terrorism. On the sidelines of the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, an event to promote democracy in Denmark, she uploaded a video to Instagram in which she jokes in English about blowing up a pipeline. “Of course we’re thinking about how to blow up the longest crude oil pipeline in the world,” she says in the recording. She goes on to explain that the EACOP pipeline is meant to be built in East Africa, which she will prevent.
EACOP stands for East African Crude Oil Pipeline. The project is also known as the Uganda-Tanzania Crude Oil Pipeline, as the pipeline will run more than 1,400 kilometers through Uganda and Tanzania. French oil company Total Energies announced in February that it had received the green light to build the pipeline.
The project is estimated to cost $10 billion. Environmentalists criticize that thousands of families would have to make way for the pipeline. In addition, nature reserves would be attacked, the planned tube would run through important areas for elephants, lions and chimpanzees. The water supply in the region for millions of people is also at risk.
Among other things, on Twitter, Neubauer is criticized for her choice of words. She responded to a tweet by saying, “Jesus Maria, it’s a book.” She also published a screenshot of the book “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” by Swedish author and climate researcher Andreas Malm, who is considered the pioneer of the radical climate movement. In the book, but also in interviews, Malm argues that sabotage is a logical form of climate activism. In May he wrote in a guest article for the “Spiegel” that you don’t need big concepts to realize “that now only sabotage and property damage help”.
According to the “Bild” newspaper, when asked, Neubauer only wanted to comment on the planned pipeline project, but not on her statement. “The EACOP project alone would produce almost half a gigatonne of CO2. That is why we have been working for months with activists from the region, i.e. Uganda and Tanzania, and also with many people from France against the pipeline that the French company Total is building want,” she is quoted as saying.
“We are talking to the French government, potential investors and insurers of the pipeline, and mobilizing via social networks so that this climate-killing pipeline is never built, but finally called off. Almost all German insurers and banks – except for Deutsche Bank – have it already refused to support the project – because it is so harmful. (…) The construction of the EACOP pipeline must be called off.”
