Stop Losing Our Battles: From War of Attrition to Cascading Failure

The consequences of industrial society are already devastating for bothhumans and non-humans, and they’re only getting worse. We’ve known this for decades. Yet, nothing changes. Our society has had decades to break free from its addiction to technology. The dangers have been clear for years, yet it remains too dependent to let go.

Since 1990, global fossil fuel consumption has only droppedonce—in 2009, and that was due to the global recession, not bychoice. Unless forced, the economy keeps burning more oil year afteryear.

Many indirect solutions, like mass voluntary changes, governmentaction, green technology, and energy efficiency, have shown theirineffectiveness. Once we move past them, new possibilities open up.When we recognize that our primary goal is to halt the technologicalsystem and ensure its collapse before our ecosystems do, our focusshould shift to finding the most effective ways to achieve that.

THE FAILURE OF THE WAR OF ATTRITION

THE ATTRITION STRATEGY: A SLOW AND EXTENDED STRUGGLE

The environmental movement follows a strategy of attrition. What is a war of attrition? It’s a slow, prolonged struggle aimed at weakening the enemy until it collapses on its own.

In practice, this means responding defensively to the industrial system’s assaults, opposing one destructive project at a time. This approach is failing. Occasional victories—like those at Notre Dame des Landes or Sivens—do little to weaken the institutions driving industrial expansion; at best, they slightly delay its relentless progress. These successes often require nearly all our resources, leaving dozens of similar projects to proceed elsewhere with little or no resistance.

On a tactical level, we also rely on attrition: filing lawsuits, boycotting companies, blocking infrastructure, and chaining ourselves to construction equipment. In essence, we aim to increase the costs of these projects to the point of making them unprofitable. But once again, our resources are insignificant compared to those of our adversaries. States and multinational corporations can effortlessly allocate billions of euros to overcome these hurdles. Moreover, corporations and governments can anticipate our tactics and find ways to circumvent them.

A STRATEGY DOOMED TO FAIL

To truly make progress in our war of attrition, we would need not only to stop all industrial expansion—an achievement that remains far out of reach—but also to dismantle existing infrastructure such as pipelines, power plants, and oil fields. Yet even if we somehow succeeded in this ambitious goal, our strategy would still fall short in the end.

A war of attrition only works if the opponent weakens faster than we do, with our losses kept at sustainable levels over a long period. But there’s nothing sustainable about the current surge in CO2 emissions or the rapid decline in biodiversity—the crisis is already unfolding. Even if we had the resources to sustain such a prolonged effort, which we clearly don’t, we are critically short on time.

The war of attrition is a flawed strategy in our current position.We lack the resources to match our opponent, and we certainly don’t have the time to outlast them. Our situation is a perfect example of asymmetrical warfare : two sides with vastly unequal power. As individuals and as a movement, we must move beyond this fragmented approach and find a more effective path forward.

TOWARDS A CASCADING FAILURE STRATEGY

The war against the planet, the majority of humanity, and future generations is driven by fossil fuels. To move beyond a strategy of attrition, we must think in terms of systems, flows, nodes, and, crucially, bottlenecks. We need to understand how oil, coal, and gas are extracted, transported, refined, distributed, and consumed. It’s essential to identify thes ystem’s weakest points and determine where we can intervene for the greatest impact.

In practical terms, we don’t need to dismantle all the factories, destroy all the bulldozers, or demolish all the roads. We simply need to paralyze what allows them to function: their infrastructure.

Industrial systems are built to handle the loss of one or two components without major disruption, quickly addressing any resulting issues. However, they are designed for efficiency—producing large quantities at high speeds—not for resilience to shocks. When enough critical components fail at once, the failures ripple through the system like falling dominos, causing an escalating series of breakdowns. The impacts grow exponentially, and the longest disruptions persist. In the right conditions, a cascading failure can bring the entire system to a halt, and with repeated actions, it may never recover.

FOR A BETTER SELECTION OF TARGETS

Unlike the current situation, where activists select projects to block based on symbolic reasons or the immediate damage they cause, the cascading failure strategy requires a precise selection of targets.

In fact, the U.S. Special Operations Forces developed the CARVER matrix to enhance target selection:

C - Criticality: How critical is the component to the system?

A- Accessibility: Is it easy to target this component?

R - Recoverability: How easy would it be for the system to recover from damage?

V - Vulnerability: How easy is it to damage the component with the tactics and weapons available?

E - Effect:  What are the possible undesirable side effects?

R- Recognizability: How easy is it to identify the target in poor conditions, such as a dark, rainy night?

Most environmental activists, whether legal or illegal, have so far chosen accessible, vulnerable targets. But they are neither critical nor difficult to replace. To be effective, activists should think in terms of the CARVER matrix, with the aim of triggering a cascading failure. In doing so, they'd understand that it's better to tackle the power grid than a big, useless new project. They'd understand that certain weak points aren't necessarily where you think they are. Finally, they would understand that it is possible to change the course of history.