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+## Chapter 4
+
+In the previous two chapters, I've explored how and why contemporary green
+rhetoric is too often failing, and argued that the apocalyptic form is not one
+of the root causes. In this chapter, I aim to show that in order for green
+rhetoric to succeed, it must imitate some of the rhetorical strategies of the
+Apocalypse.
+
+In order to consider how green rhetoric might succeed, I have to specify: what
+is the rhetor trying to achieve? How are they hoping that it will be achieved?
+And: who are they trying to persuade to do the achieving?
+
+So, for the sake of a discussion point, I will take the example of the Green
+New Deal. The idea behind a Green New Deal, alluding by its name to the 'New
+Deal' of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt \[?\], is a large programme of
+government action at the nation-state level aiming to significantly change the
+way the economy is structured for the better.
+
+There is no fixed list of measures a Green New Deal might contain, but the
+centrepiece measures are likely to include strengthening environmental
+regulations on industry and beefing up enforcement agencies; renationalising
+key industrial sectors, particularly those in control of public goods such as
+transport infrastructure or energy infrastructure; increasing tax on wealth and
+corporations and closing tax loopholes; and spending the money on investment in
+improving and expanding the public realm and subsidising local green
+industries.
+
+The package may also extend, for example, to increasing spending on research
+and development; raising tarrifs on underpriced imported solar panels and wind
+turbines to support the development of national green industries; banning
+fracking and other extreme forms of fossil fuel extraction; instituting a
+moratorium on new data centres; making it easier for corporations to be sued
+for environmental damages; subsidising heat pumps and home insulation; and,
+yes, perhaps even raising carbon taxes.
+
+As with the original New Deal, the wide-ranging scope is thought to be a
+crucial part of the proposal. Each measure is made more attractive to its
+potential supporters because it comes as part of a package promising to
+transform society for the better.
+
+Like the original New Deal, it is not intended to be attractive to everyone. It
+is not designed to be attractive to owners of capital or senior managers, for
+whom a Green New Deal would be very expensive indeed: it would result in huge
+cuts to their salaries, bonuses and dividends, and reduce their power over the
+economy. Nor is the Green New Deal designed to be attractive to neoliberal
+ideologues, who determinedly believe that the invisible hand of the market will
+eventually, eventually, eventually bring about a just society. It could, however,
+be attractive to a large majority of, say, the UK electorate, covering proletarian
+households in both the working classes and many of those in the middle classes.
+
+The original New Deal was largely made possible by an enormous (not to say
+'apocalyptic') wave of industrial action. However, in the US in the 1930s, a
+large proportion of the workforce was unionised, and employed in sectors such
+as manufacturing, energy, and transport, where workers are gathered in
+tight-knit communities on shop floors and strikes hit shareholders hard. In the
+present UK context, unions encompass a much smaller proportion of the
+workforce, and much of the workforce is employed in the service sector, where
+industrial action can be difficult to organise and less effective than in
+primary industries. Industrial action can still play an important role, and
+Matt Huber [@climate-change-class-war] gives an excellent discussion of how
+green rhetoric might be effective in that arena. But because of the structure
+of the UK economy, it's likely that industrial action would have to work
+alongside other forms of political action if a Green New Deal is to be brought
+about in the UK in the next decade or two, and it's those other forms of action
+which I'll focus on.
+
+Alongside industrial action, people in the UK can join political parties, where
+they can shape policies by engaging in internal politics, by voting for
+candidates for election, and by standing for election themselves. They can also
+vote in general elections, ultimately resulting in electing a government which
+prioritises a Green New Deal policy. In order to increase momentum behind the
+movement, they can also join protests or take part in direct action.
+
+Notably, all of these actions may be difficult for those called to take part in
+them. Getting involved in politics in any but the most trivial capacity
+requires giving up evenings and weekends: annoying for, say, a Masters student,
+but potentially a major sacrifice for an exhausted parent working a full-time
+job. Standing for election could be costly to your relationships, and expose
+you to ridicule and abuse. Depending on the action involved, protesting or
+taking direct action could get you arrested. Meanwhile, the benefits of a Green
+New Deal stand far off, and remain largely outside your control. The call must
+then be to make a sacrifice for what is good, even if, paradoxically, it costs
+you.
+
+This is, in John Collin's terms, an 'ethic for martyrdom.' So, could John's
+apocalyptic rhetorical strategies be of use in motivating UK citizens to take
+political actions to advance the cause of a Green New Deal?
+
+First, I'll consider minority cognition. This was the first aspect of John's
+strategy which I considered in the previous chapter. While the particular kind
+of minority cognition favoured by John -- that is, direct testimony imparted by
+a divine authority -- may be unpersuasive to many UK citizens, the preference
+for a minority cognition is still necessary.
+
+Recall that, as Thompson [@thompson-revelation] argued, St. John needed to use
+minority cognition in order to resist the overwhelming weight of the majority
+epistemology of Greek society, which would have pressed his audience into
+submission to the imperial cult. Likewise, in our society, there is are
+empire-like forces constantly reinforcing dominant epistemologies, and among
+these is the fossil fuel industry.
+
+The fossil fuel industry has repeatedly bought out the science \[EVIDENCE\]. It
+continues to do so \[EVIDENCE\]. It has also reinforced conceptual frameworks
+such as 'carbon footprinting' which serve its interests by shifting blame for
+social harms from themselves onto individuals [^See chapter 1]. Therefore, as
+long as the fossil fuel industry has significant power, the majority
+epistemology of our society cannot help but be partially shaped by fossil fuel
+interests. To escape fossil knowledge requires minority cognition.
+
+This has precedents even within the green movement. In the view of Linda Lear,
+the effect of _Silent Spring_, Rachel Carson's damning exposé on the chemical
+industry, was to not only bring about regulation, but end an era of
+unquestioning trust in government agencies and chemical companies. She exposed
+that they hadn't done their homework or had lied. In a Cold War context,
+questioning the techno-scientific-industrial authorities could be perceived as
+traitorous. Chemical companies fought hard against her, sued the publishers to
+try and prevent it being published, then spent a quarter of a million dollars
+on an aggressive publicity campaign against her. She was attacked for being
+'emotional' and an 'hysterical woman.' The fact she had published novels was
+cited as evidence that she couldn't be a real scientist, and her literary
+writing style as evidence that what she was writing couldn't be real science.
+Real science, the chemical industry hastened to remind the impressionable
+public, is necessarily presented in the format of laboratory reports,
+maximising their utilisation of technical jargon in order to avoid
+under-qualified persons from understanding their contents. Carson had no PhD,
+no academic institution, and no network of scientific colleagues to back her
+up. [@silent-spring, Afterword]
+
+To fight the chemical lobby, Carson had to adopt minority epistemology. So,
+alongside her considerable arsenal of traditional scientific facts, she
+included in her book historical facts based on lived experience, with no
+attempt to fit them into clearly-defined quantifiable metrics, in the
+scientific style favoured by the chemical industry. One memorable example was
+her report that parathion poisoning had been known to induce serious illness
+not only in those exposed directly, but also to the physicians who treated
+them, and even the hospital staff who washed their clothes. \[PAGE NUMBERS\]
+
+Like St. John, she was also forced to undermine the chemical industry's
+majority epistemology. In _Silent Spring_, she showed how the chemical
+industry funded the same science which enabled its profits \[CITE\]. She
+undermined their conceptual frameworks, arguing that the use of words like
+'pesticide' and 'insecticide' function to mask the truth that the chemicals
+involved are in fact poisons (and in some cases were originally developed by
+military scientists for the purpose of deliberately injuring and killing human
+beings) \[CITE\]. And she showed how the chemical lobby used science to dismiss
+valid first-hand experiences and impose their solutions on people against their
+interests and expressed desires. For instance, she told the story of Joseph
+Sweeny Todd, a \[WHO\] in Ohio, who, in opting for a targeted approach to
+containing dutch elm disease rather than blanket poisoning, had to go against
+the advice of the chemical companies, the universities, and the US Department
+of Agriculture. \[CITE\]
+
+If rhetors today want to persuade their audiences to support a Green New Deal,
+they're going to have to fight the majority epistemology, held firmly in place
+by fossil interests. To do that, they'll need to exploit minority cognition,
+undermining the epistemologies that best serve fossil interests and finding
+alternatives that oppose them.
+
+The second feature of John's rhetoric I considered was the theme of
+tribulations. Just as John's audience stood to lose out if they resisted the
+imperial cult, UK citizens stand to lose out, in time, money, and friends, if
+they take political action for a Green New Deal. If audiences are to understand
+how such a sacrifice could be good for them, they will need to see that their
+sacrifices are not meaningless, but part of a much larger context.
+
+\[EXAMPLES\]
+
+Finally, the third feature of John's rhetoric I examined was his end-time
+speculation. This is already so much a part of green rhetoric that it has led
+to considerable meta-discussion already, particularly on the relative merits of
+utopian against dystopian schemas [@green-utopias; @forget-me-not, Epilogue]. I
+have already examined one example from _The Future We Choose_
+[@future-we-choose]. Green rhetors seem to find it irresistible to speculate on
+where this might all end, for good or ill. Even the Cold-War-inspired total
+catastrophism is one perspective on the end times.
+
+St. John, like all biblical apocalypticists, affirms a utopian end-time. As I
+discussed in the previous chapter, this is important to his rhetorical goals.
+There is no use pointing to a dystopia, or (perhaps worse still) concluding
+that we can't really be certain what the ultimate future holds. Such
+conclusions would create doubt and fear amongst his audience, and suggest to
+them that keeping your head down and submitting to the imperial ideology might
+be a safer wager than risking everything on a God who might not be willing or
+able to save those who love him. Instead, John, pointing to God's
+all-encompassing sovereignty and justice, makes a redemptive end appear
+irresistible, thus encouraging his audience to bet the house on Jesus.
+
+Green rhetors ought to take note of this. A few rhetors have expressed
+pessimism about the end, but the dominant motif is uncertainty. _The Future We
+Choose_ makes this clear from the very title. In _Forget Me Not_, Sophie
+Pavelle insists that although she could conclude either with a dystopian vision
+or a utopian vision, she refuses to do either, because the scientific evidence
+does not warrant either conclusion [@forget-me-not, Epilogue].
+
+This won't do, as should be obvious from the foregoing. If there are no
+scientifically valid utopian visions for the future of planet Earth, then green
+rhetors must have unscientific visions instead. John faced a similar challenge,
+and likewise adopted a minority epistemology -- an eschatological vision -- in
+order to convince his audience that the good fight was worth fighting.
+
+\[EXAMPLES\]