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 ## Chapter 2
 
-Catastrophe is a prominent literary feature of contemporary green rhetoric. The
-word 'catastrophe' first entered English through early modern translations of
-Greek plays, meaning the denouement of a plot. Through association with
+Among the numerous complaints commentators have expressed about catastrophic
+green rhetoric, I will examine three in particular. One, it is alleged that
+catastrophic language encourages a fatalistic outlook and therefore
+discourages effective political action. Second, catastrophe is supposed to
+promote business as usual and shut down radical discourses. Third, critics
+argue that catastrophic thinking flattens out power relationships and thus
+contributes to the 'death of politics.' I will examine each of these
+complaints in turn, but first I will explore where catastrophic language comes
+from and how it ends up featuring in contemporary green rhetoric.
+
+The word 'catastrophe' first entered English through early modern translations
+of Greek plays, meaning the denouement of a plot. Through association with
 tragedies, it came to acquire connotations of disaster, and in the nineteenth
 century, became closely associated with the (now antiquated) 'catastrophic'
 theory of geological time, according to which distinct geological epochs were