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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
@@ -52,8 +61,23 @@ facing with courage her grief and her own inevitable death. Even a talented
 writer such as Foster, intentionally seeking to break new imaginative ground for
 conceptualising green crises, seems unable to escape the motif of catastrophe.
 
-Recently, academics examining green rhetoric have raised concerns with this
-catastrophism.
+The word 'apocalypse' is sometimes used as if to stand for 'catastrophe.'
+Of course, the Apocalypse of St John has a great deal in common with the concept
+of a geological catastrophe. Cosmos-scale world-changing events destroy much of
+the existing world order and its life-sustaining powers: the heavens are
+rolled up like a scroll, the sun and moon are darkened, water turns to blood,
+fire rains down from above. In its place, a new world order is established,
+which enables different forms of life. Al Gore, in his influential global
+warming campaign film, _An Inconvenient Truth_, was (and remains) typical in the
+way he describes the consequences of certain floods and wildfires as 'like a
+nature hike through the Book of Revelations' [@inconvenient-truth]. In the next
+chapter, I will argue that reducing apocalypse to mere catastrophe misses out
+important features of apocalyptic language as exemplified by St John, but for
+now it is worth noting that some rhetors use allusions to the Apocalypse in order
+to function as a catastrophic symbol.
+
+Recently, academics examining green rhetoric have raised concerns with green
+catastrophism. The first issue I will examine here is fatalism.
 
 It has been claimed green catastrophism is fatalistic: that the catastrophe is
 implicitly inevitable, thus encouraging despair over hope and therefore mere
@@ -69,37 +93,70 @@ Paleontologists speculate about the causes of historic mass extinctions:
 volcanic eruptions, asteroid strikes, cyclical climate fluctuations gone rogue?
 One thing's for sure, there's nothing the dinosaurs could have done to stop it.
 
-A fatalistic outlook may, at best, lead to what Kvandal & Levy call
-'ritualistic' behaviours: 'behaviours characterized by rigidity, compulsion, and
-goal demotion.' [@kvandal-2025] That is, people feel compelled to act in rigidly
-specific ways, even though they don't have a clear grasp on the practical
-outcomes of their behaviour. Calling on the cognitive science of religion, the
-authors assert that 'there is a general consensus that human beings tend to
-ritualize more of their behavior when they lose agency under conditions of
-stress, uncertainty, or hazards more generally.' They note the example of Greta
-Thunberg sailing across the Atlantic in a zero-carbon vessel to speak at the
-United Nations. The huge effort involved in that act seems disproportionate to
-the small impact had on greenhouse gas emissions. The authors also raise
-examples of civil disobedience motivated by climate pessimism. Fatalism might
-lead to politically productive behaviours. But the fact that ritualistic
-behaviours are severed from practical outcomes makes it a pretty bad bet:
+Some apocalyptic movements and worldviews have also promoted fatalisms. One
+notable contemporary movement is the modern pre-millenialist movement in the
+USA. Pre-millenialists believe in the 'Rapture,' based on an interpretation of
+Thess 4:17: 'then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together
+with \[the dead in Christ\] in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.'
+
+While pre-millenialists have traditionally been notable for rejecting the
+apocalyptic vision of the USA as the New Jerusalem of Rev 21, and therefore
+been at times able to point out distortions and injustices belonging to
+mainstream American patriotic ideology [@unveiling-empire, pp. 3-15], the
+pre-millenialist outlook is inescapably fatalist. As a result, when the 'social
+gospel' movement took off in the late nineteenth century, some
+pre-millenialists condemned the movement for failing to trust God's plan to
+redeem the world in the end-times and trying to redeem the world by inferior
+and vain human efforts instead [@unveiling-empire, p. 10]. Wes Howard-Brooke
+and Anthony Gwyther have observed this contradictory situation:
+
+> \[…\] in the 1950s-1970s, pre-millenialists were also taking frequent aim at what
+> they saw as other U.S. cultural signs of the approaching End. Among their
+> targets were television \[…\], consumerism, advancing technology, changes in
+> gender roles in the family and workplace, the advent of the New Age movement,
+> rock and roll, and homosexuality. One thing was certainly true about
+> premillenialists: they were willing to look American culture in the eye and
+> not flinch. Of course, they had no desire to repair the damage or heal the
+> wounds; such malignant forces were simply further evidence that the Second
+> Coming was getting closer and closer, and hence, the Rapture of the true
+> believers. [@unveiling-empire, p. 14]
+
+In the case of the green movement, a fatalistic outlook may, at best, lead to
+what Kvandal & Levy call 'ritualistic' behaviours: 'behaviours characterized by
+rigidity, compulsion, and goal demotion.' [@kvandal-2025] While this may not
+serve as an adequate account of ritual behaviours in general, the authors'
+point is this: green activists who hold a fatalistic outlook feel compelled to
+act in rigidly specific ways, even though they don't have a clear grasp on the
+practical outcomes of their behaviour.
+
+Calling on the cognitive science of religion, the authors assert that 'there is
+a general consensus that human beings tend to ritualize more of their behavior
+when they lose agency under conditions of stress, uncertainty, or hazards more
+generally.' They note the example of Greta Thunberg sailing across the Atlantic
+in a zero-carbon vessel to speak at the United Nations. The huge effort
+involved in that act seems disproportionate to the small impact had on
+greenhouse gas emissions. The authors also raise examples of civil disobedience
+motivated by climate pessimism. Fatalism might lead to politically productive
+behaviours. But the fact that ritualistic behaviours are severed from practical
+outcomes makes it a pretty bad bet:
 
 > By not allowing for hope that the world can be salvaged, this form of social
 > activism provides outlets in which activists alleviate anxiety by obtaining a
 > (simulated) sense of agency in the face of an uncontrollable threat.
 > [@kvandal-2025, p. 701]
 
-Action directed at making you feel better might lead to change in your own life,
-but it is not necessarily going to solve the problem that made you feel anxious
-in the first place. Juli Gittinger has shown that fatalistic climate narratives
-have driven some people in the US to join the 'prepper' movement, accumulating
-stockpiles of essential goods, building emergency shelters, learning 'survival
-skills,' and collecting weapons to defend your family's patch from desperate
-outsiders. [@american-apocalyptic, see esp. chp. 3, 4] 'Prepper' culture (which
-owes its existence to Cold War fears of all-out nuclear war
-[@american-apocalyptic, pp. 48-56]) might be a minority pursuit, but it is a
-response to the same apocalyptic storytelling which is a widespread phenomenon
-in mainstream American media:
+Action directed at making you feel better might lead to change in your own
+life, but it is not necessarily going to solve the problem that made you feel
+anxious in the first place. Juli Gittinger has shown that fatalistic climate
+narratives have driven some people in the US to join the 'prepper' movement,
+accumulating stockpiles of essential goods, building emergency shelters,
+learning 'survival skills,' and collecting weapons to defend your family's
+patch from desperate outsiders. [@american-apocalyptic, see esp. chp. 3, 4]
+'Prepper' culture (which owes its existence to Cold War fears of all-out
+nuclear war [@american-apocalyptic, pp. 48-56] and is sometimes also pursued as
+a result of certain pre-millenialist beliefs [@unveiling-empire, p. 5]) might
+be a minority pursuit, but it is a response to the same apocalyptic
+storytelling which is a widespread phenomenon in mainstream American media:
 
 > The theme of _impending catastrophe_ \[…\] frames the news story
 > as more apocalyptic and therefore often becomes more sensationalized or highly
@@ -126,12 +183,19 @@ rhetoric as 'doom-mongering.' Closely related is the discourse of 'British comic
 nihilism,' or, as they put it, the discourse of 'bugger it and open another
 bottle!'
 
-Green catastrophism may have political implications, too. It has been argued
-that implicit in the catastrophist narrative is the assumption that everything
-was going well until the catastrophe loomed its ugly head. This suggests that
-'business as usual' is alright, and therefore obscures the need for a radical
-critique of the business-as-usual political get-up which produces massive
-destruction.
+So, because catastrophic language tends to encourage a fatalist outlook, it
+fails when it convinces -- since 'why bother trying when we're all stuffed
+anyway?' -- and it fails when it doesn't -- since 'why pay attention to such
+excitable nonsense?'
+
+A second problem with catastrophic language is that it is conservative. Often,
+catastrophist narratives tacitly assume that everything was going well until
+The Catastrophe loomed its ugly head. This suggests that 'business as usual' is
+alright, and that a solution to the problem, by definition, means a return to
+normal. But if, as many political analysts contend, green harms are in fact an
+inevitable consequence of business as usual, such narratives then obstruct the
+radical political critique which will be necessary for a lasting solution to
+green issues.
 
 Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac provided one demonstration of this
 mindset in _The Future We Choose_, which begins with an imaginative description
@@ -166,56 +230,21 @@ Eileen Crist, discussing Anthropocene discourse, puts it:
 > still contestable, partially reversible, and worthy of resistance and of
 > inspiring a different vision. [@poverty-nomenclature, p. 25]
 
-It gets worse for the catastrophist. Perhaps the most vicious criticism of green
-catastrophism is that by leaning on 'Anthropocene' discourses, green rhetors
-flatten out social relationships. This, say the critics, is the death of all
-genuine politics. \[EXAMPLES\]
-
-For Frances Flannery, Professor Emerita of Religion at James Madison University,
-the upshot of all this is that 'We Must Stop Saying "Climate Apocalypse"'
-[@flannery-2024].
-
-Flannery emphasises that in popular imagination, 'apocalypse' signifies nothing
-more than the end of the world, ignoring the world-creating aspects of biblical
-apocalypses [@flannery-2024, p. 209]. This may be a legacy of Cold-War era
-nuclear rhetoric and science fiction, which re-purposed the symbol 'apocalypse'
-to describe the consequences of a nuclear war, while deliberately stripping the
-disaster of any redemptive afterward [@wojcik-end-of-the-world, p. 1]. Thus, she
-argues, the result of raising the threat of a 'climate apocalypse' is to 'create
-passivity rather than spur on quick and cooperative climate action' and to inspire
-mass climate anxiety. Such a fatalist narrative can also imply that human action
-is irrelevant, or encourage audiences to put their hope in 'savior figures such
-as inventors, scientists, or governments who might rescue humanity in the nick
-of time.' [@flannery-2024, p. 210]
-
-Flannery also adds a couple further reasons why apocalypse in particular, apart
-from its connotations of catastrophe, might be an unhelpful symbol to apply to
-climate change. For one, if millenialist Christians, who are politically
-influential in places such as the United States and the Congo which are
-significant for the global climate, are persuaded that climate change is a 'sign
-of the times,' there's a risk that they will welcome climate change instead of
-fighting it.
-
-For another, she notes that in the Apocalypse of St John, the wicked are
-punished and the righteous vindicated. Meanwhile, in the climate case, it is
-people living in the Global South who are expected to suffer the most from
-climate change. Thus, telling a narrative of 'climate apocalypse' from the
-Global North suggests that people living in the Global North are the suffering
-righteous who will be vindicated, and those in the Global South the wicked who
-will be punished. But, in Flannery's view, this flips the script on the
-historical facts, which show that climate change is if anything a result of the
-'wickedness' of those living in the Global North.
-
-We are now beginning to expose five major criticisms of the use of apocalyptic
-language in green rhetoric:
-
-1. Apocalyptic language is catastrophic and thus fatalistic.
-2. Apocalyptic language is catastrophic and thus obstructs radical criticism of
-   business as usual.
-3. Apocalyptic language is catastrophic and thus flattens out power
-   relationships.
-4. Apocalyptic language is millenarian and thus promotes destruction.
-5. Apocalyptic language is violent and vindictive.
+So catastrophic language, apart from its fatalist tendencies, can shut down
+radical political discourses and thus discredit the best solutions to green
+problems before they've even been proposed. But perhaps the most vicious
+criticism of green catastrophism is that since green catastrophism reverberates
+strongly with 'Anthropocene' discourses, such rhetoric flattens out power
+relationships. This, say the critics, is the death of all genuine politics.
+
+\[EXAMPLES\]
+
+In sum, green catastrophism is accused of encouraging a fatalist outlook,
+disarming radical discourses in favour of business as usual, and deeping harmful
+'post-politics' discourses by obscuring the importance of power relationships.
+In all these ways, catastrophic language in green rhetoric can work to actively
+de-motivate audiences to play their part in bringing about the green movement's
+desired outcomes.
 
 ## TODO