Rebels Against Oblivion: Fighting in the Age of Ecological Catastrophe

A gripping, immersive tour of the front lines in today’s battle for environmental justice, where pipeline saboteurs, civil disobedients, and clandestine organizers are taking direct action in the fight for a livable future

This year may be the hottest in our planet’s history, yet our leaders do little more than “blah blah blah,” in Greta Thunberg’s memorable words—and we, too, sit idle. Well, not all of us.

Growing ranks of men and women, young and old, in jungles and cities, are taking direct action against our fossil-fueled society’s mad march to the precipice. As the natural world is increasingly disfigured, as environmental crises proliferate and we fail to meet even the most modest commitments, these citizens are rising up while putting their lives on the line.

With shocking drama and righteous urgency, Rebels Against Oblivion lays bare the lives and beliefs of the people throwing their bodies on the gears of planetary ruin. Christopher Ketcham embeds himself with eco-saboteurs in the American Southwest, indigenous defenders of the Amazon, and veteran activists in Europe facing years’ imprisonment for disrupting industry and airports. As Ketcham’s propulsive reporting makes clear, these seemingly small and disparate groups are in fact part of an incipient uprising, marking the beginning of a new ecological defense.

Impassioned and hard-hitting, Rebels Against Oblivion reveals the possibilities for a world of democratic resistance to environmental collapse, of surprising victories and manifold defeats, in which the question of what we can do is being confronted in real time.