reading log: green utopias

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@@ -6,6 +6,66 @@ author: Joe Carstairs
 
 ## 2026-04-30
 
+### @{green-utopias}
+
+Garforth pointed out that climate apocalypses are out there and having both
+revolutionary and conservative effects. We cannot change this just by wishing it
+to be so. The question that remains for us is, what do we use climate apocalypse
+to do, if we use it at all? Her suggestion is to use it to criticise
+conservative discourses.
+
+I found her description of conservative discourses helpful, and found her idea
+interesting that apocalypses can be used to criticise these discourses. I didn't
+understand the idea that conservative approaches 'de-politicise' things, but I'm
+curious. She provided lots of useful references for the subject of conservative
+environmental discourses and criticisms of climate apocalyptic. @{future-ethics}
+also came up a lot for chapters in favour of climate apocalypse.
+
+Garforth discussed 'adaptation and mitigation', 'limits' and 'sustainability'
+discourses, as well as 'environmental modernization theory.' In her view, these
+discourses frame the environmental problem as a market failure, an externality
+that needs to be internalised, achieved by incremental economistic improvements
+within existing power frameworks, particularly nation-states and the UN. High
+water marks of this movement include Kyoto, Bali 2007, the EU ETS, and the fad
+for carbon calculators.
+
+Good folk to read on this are: @{why-we-disagree}, @{new-tech-env-innovation},
+@{ecological-modernisation}, @{ecological-modernization-theory},
+@{politics-climate-change}, @{hulme-2008}.
+
+Naess, the founder of 'deep ecology', criticised limits discourse for being
+anthropocentric, and favoured an ecocentric view.
+
+Garforth criticised these discourses -- carbon calculators in particular -- for
+limiting green desire to individual market choices, a better self and a better
+lifestyle but not a better society, not a better idea of what it means for human
+beings to be well. @{seeds-dystopia} argued that these discourses are bad
+because they seek to manage unsustainability, depoliticise, dissolve radicalism,
+they are post-politics, rule out new ideas about how humans can be free and
+well.
+
+Garforth argued that apocalypse can fight back against post-politics,
+re-politicise the issues, bring back the prospect of a different future which
+post-politics closes off. Apocalypse can also give gravity, urgency to the
+issues, which the modernization discourses don't. She argued that the best
+apocalypses for this purpose are 'immanent', a constantly unfolding crisis,
+rather than apocalypses with an 'end', since their role is to get us to live
+well and make ethical decisions during the currently ongoing environmental
+crisis. See also @{future-ethics}.
+
+She pointed out that climate change is a wicked problem, and it is not possible
+to simply recognise it, respond to it, and resolve it. It requires many messy
+responses. See @{why-we-disagree}. I think this is a good corrective to
+Thunberg's rhetoric, implying that our problems would be solved if only the
+politicians recognised the gravity of the threat, listened to the scientists,
+and behaved like grown-ups.
+
+She raised some criticisms of climate apocalypse: it causes apathy, anxiety
+without agency, mere entertainment, or scares folk into authoritarian solutions.
+For more on this, see @{anthropocene-fictions}, @{future-ethics},
+@{fear-wont-do-it}, @{warm-words}, @{sustaining-unsustainable},
+@{swyngedouw-2010}.
+
 ## 2026-04-29
 
 ### @{american-apocalyptic}