chp1: listen to the science

2 files changed, 69 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/bibliography.bib b/bibliography.bib
index 743d16b..562fd2d 100644
--- a/bibliography.bib
+++ b/bibliography.bib
@@ -1,3 +1,21 @@
+@book{reason-dark-time,
+    title={Reason in a Dark Time},
+    author={Jamieson, Dale},
+    subtitle={Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed—and What It Means for Our Future},
+    publisher={Oxford University Press},
+    address={Oxford},
+    date={2014},
+}
+
+@book{betrayal-science-reason,
+    author={Ehrlich, Paul R. and Ehrlich, Anne H.},
+    title={Betrayal of Science and Reason},
+    subtitle={How Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future},
+    publisher={Island Press},
+    address={Washington},
+    date={1996},
+}
+
 @book{conflicts-of-interest,
     author={Narain, Sunita},
     title={Conflicts of Interest},
diff --git a/chapter1.md b/chapter1.md
index 0273a80..fea3c99 100644
--- a/chapter1.md
+++ b/chapter1.md
@@ -296,10 +296,59 @@ good for them, and thus their proposals are politically impossible.
 Taking another approach, many green rhetors advocate for a simple programme:
 listen to the science, then act rationally. This call to action suggests that
 the root cause of the relevant problems is that some relevant actors are not
-responding rationally to the scientific evidence. \[EXAMPLE\].
+responding rationally to the scientific evidence.
+
+This is a dialectic favoured by the star climate campaigner, Greta Thunberg. In
+February 2019, she spoke to a gathering of EU civil servants in Brussels:
+
+> We know that most politicians don't want to talk to us. Good, we don't want to
+> talk to them either. We want them to talk to the scientists instead.
+> [@no-one-is-too-small, pp. 53-54]
+
+In September of the same year, while the US government was halfway through the
+4-year process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, she spoke at the US
+Congress. In a speech which repeatedly referenced Martin Luther King Junior's 'I
+have a dream' speech, she pleaded with legislators:
+
+> Perhaps it is impossible. But looking at those numbers – looking at the
+> current best available science signed by every nation – then I think that is
+> precisely what we are up against. But you must not spend all of your time
+> dreaming, or see this as some political fight to win. And you must not gamble
+> your children's future on the flip of a coin. Instead, you must unite behind
+> the science. [@no-one-is-too-small, pp. 122-123]
+
+In their 1996 rationalist-environmentalist call to arms, _Betrayal of Science
+and Reason_, Paul and Anne Ehrlich were explicit about how they saw the link
+between science and government policy:
+
+> In short, people should have faith in their own judgment when they've taken
+> the time to examine different views of an issue and taken into account their
+> own predispositions and prejudices. Then they can become activists—devote as
+> much of their time as possible to improving the human condition. The
+> scientific community needs help in re-plotting humanity's trajectory toward a
+> sustainable future. [@betrayal-science-reason, p. 212]
 
 The spectre of the 'science denier' or 'science fraudster' has traditionally
-served as the main scapegoat of green rhetoric. For example, \[EXAMPLE\].
+served as the main scapegoat of green rhetoric. Much of _Betrayal and Science
+and Reason_ is taken up with naming, exposing, and rebutting some of their
+critics, whom they derogatively label 'brownlashes.' In Thunberg's speeches, she
+has repeatedly proclaimed the narrative that 'we spoke the science and demanded
+that the people in power would listen to and act on the science, but our
+political leaders didn't listen' [@no-one-is-too-small, p. 134]. Dale Jamieson,
+a philosopher at New York University, asked in 2014 why there had been so little
+social-scale action to address the problems of climate change, and concluded
+that the main factors were as follows:
+
+> We live in a society in which there is a cultural chasm between scientists and
+> policy-makers. Most of us, including scientists, are largely confused about
+> the relations between facts and values, and science and policy. Many of us are
+> scientifically ignorant, and large sums have been spent to further confuse and
+> misinform us. This has occurred against the background of rising cynicism,
+> eroding respect for Enlightenment values, and dysfunctional political systems.
+> Making things worse, climate change presents us with the largest collective
+> action problem that humanity has ever faced, one that is extended both in space
+> and time. It is not the sort of problem that Mother Nature raised us to solve
+> or even to notice. [@reason-dark-time, pp. 103-104]
 
 However, there's no particular reason to think that the fossil fuel industry is
 scientifically incompetent or unable to act rationally. In fact, fossil fuel
@@ -479,7 +528,6 @@ catastrophic language is counter-productive in this context.
 ## TODO
 
 - Find quotes and page numbers in @{back-to-nature} and @{heat}
-- Find examples of 'listen to the scientists' and 'science denial' discourses
 - Find an example: green rhetor doing some soul-searching
 - Explore: magical green proposals
 - Explore: PMC people feel powerless because the actions they have taken aren't very effective