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diff --git a/bibliography.bib b/bibliography.bib index 84eb872..fd42e42 100644 --- a/bibliography.bib +++ b/bibliography.bib @@ -1,3 +1,53 @@ +@book{nuclear-winters-tale, + author={Badash, Lawrence}, + address={Cambridge}, + title={A nuclear winter's tale}, + subtitle={science and politics in the 1980s}, + isbn={0-262-25799-8}, + publisher={MIT Press}, + series={Transformations, studies in the history of science and technology}, + date={2009}, +} + +@online{ + author={Tarras Young}, + title={Protect and Survive – Creating the Campaign}, + date={2017-06-28}, + url={https://coldwar.org.uk/protect-and-survive-creating-the-campaign}, + urldate={2026-07-27}, +} + +@article{waller-2026, + author={Waller, James}, + title={How Britain Planned For Nuclear War – Then Abandoned Home Defence}, + url={https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/britain-planned-nuclear-war-abandoned-home-defence}, + urldate={2026-07-27}, + publisher={{PoliticsHome}}, +} + +@unpublished{thatcher-1990-05-15, + author={Thatcher, Margaret}, + date={1990-05-15}, + note={Speech quoted in Leggett (1990), p. 11}, +} + +@thesis{ertelt-2018, + author={Ertelt, Sarah}, + title={Nuclear Alarmism and Climate Change Fatalism as a Secular Apocalyptic Religion}, + date={2018}, + journal={Honor Scholar Theses}, + number={83}, + publisher={Scholarly and Creative Work from DePauw University}, +} + +@misc{russell-einstein, + title={The Russell-Einstein Manifesto}, + date={1955-07-09}, + author={Born, Max and Bridgman, Percy W. and Einstein, Albert and Infeld, Leopold and Joliot-Curie, Frederic and Muller, Herman J. and Pauling, Linus and Powell, Cecil F. and Rotblat, Joseph and Russell, Bertrand and Yukawa, Hideki}, + url={https://pugwash.org/1955/07/09/statement-manifesto}, + urldate={2026-07-27}, +} + @report{living-planet, title={Living Planet Report 2024}, date={2024}, diff --git a/chapter0.md b/chapter0.md index a129002..424ad57 100644 --- a/chapter0.md +++ b/chapter0.md @@ -42,25 +42,65 @@ upon wave of legislation \[EVIDENCE\]. From the beginning, one of the central issues of the green movement was nuclear power. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, nuclear power functioned as the dominant 'master frame' of the green movement, so that all other green issues -tended to be framed in nuclear terms \[EVIDENCE\]. +tended to be framed in nuclear terms. -At times, governments attempted to persuade their citizens that a nuclear war -could be fought and won, even though they knew this wasn't true \[EVIDENCE\]. -Such rhetoric served to quell resistance to pro-nuclear policies, so those who -opposed those policies attacked this narrative \[EVIDENCE\]. To do this, rhetors -invented terms such as 'nuclear winter', 'nuclear holocaust', 'nuclear -apocalypse', and 'nuclear Armageddon', while attempting to persuade their -audiences that a nuclear war would bring about the end of the world, and must -therefore be avoided at all costs \[EVIDENCE\]. +For example, in _Silent Spring_, Carson wrote that 'only within the moment of time +represented by the present century has one species – man – acquired significant +power to alter the nature of his world.' This statement echoed widespread +sentiments about nuclear power. For example, in what became known as the +'Russell-Einstein Manifesto,' eleven eminent scientists including Bertrand +Russell and Albert Einstein appealed to the public to put aside national +security concerns and consider themselves 'only as members of a biological +species,' and warned that nuclear weapons threatened 'universal death' +[@russell-einstein]. Carson argued that 'the most alarming of all man’s assaults +upon the environment' was not nuclear weapons, but chemicals. Nevertheless, in +order to make her point, she adopted an explicitly nuclear framing: + +> In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the +> sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very +> nature of the world – the very nature of its life. Strontium 90, released +> through nuclear explosions into the air, comes to earth in rain or drifts down +> as fallout, lodges in soil, enters into the grass or corn or wheat grown +> there, and in time takes up its abode in the bones of a human being, there to +> remain until his death. Similarly, chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests +> or gardens lie long in soil, entering into living organisms, passing from one +> to another in a chain of poisoning and death. Or they pass mysteriously by +> underground streams until they emerge and, through the alchemy of air and +> sunlight, combine into new forms that kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and work +> unknown harm on those who drink from once-pure wells. [@silent-spring, p. 17] -In the 1980s and 1990s, climate change moved in to take over the role of the -green movement's master frame \[EVIDENCE\]. However, the movement's nuclear -heritage left an indelible impression on the way greens talked about climate -change \[EVIDENCE\]. +At times, governments, particularly in nuclear-armed NATO states such as the US +and the UK, distributed public information campaigns informing citizens on how +to prepare for a nuclear attack, while secretly preparing in the knowledge that +tens of millions of civilians would be killed directly, probably resulting in a +total breakdown of civil society [@american-apocalyptic, pp. 48-53; +@waller-2026]. + +Such rhetoric served to quell resistance to pro-nuclear policies, so those who +opposed those policies attacked this narrative. To do this, rhetors invented +terms such as 'nuclear winter', 'nuclear holocaust', 'nuclear apocalypse', and +'nuclear Armageddon', while attempting to persuade their audiences that a +nuclear war would bring about the end of the world, and must therefore be +avoided at all costs [see e.g. @nuclear-winters-tale, chp. 6]. -So, for the last three decades, the green movement has overwhelmingly framed -climate change in terms of an impending catastrophe which would bring about the -end of the world. +Beginning in the late 1980s, climate change moved in to take over the role of +the green movement's master frame [@rootes-2012]. However, the movement's +nuclear heritage left an indelible impression on the way greens talked about +climate change. Environmental campaigners tended to frame climate change in +terms of an impending sudden catastrophe which might strike at any time: a model +far better suited to the prospect of nuclear winter than that of climate change +unfolding over decades and centuries [@ertelt-2018, pp. 25-38]. In 1990, +Margaret Thatcher described the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) +as an 'early warning system' [@thatcher-1990-05-15]. The Greenpeace Report on +global warming of the same year noted that 'even nuclear-weapons laboratories +host conferences on the greenhouse effect these days' [@greenpeace-report, p. 1] +and concluded in response to what it called the 'greenhouse threat' that 'the +prospects of future environmental security being compromised by global warming +are now so real as to make adoption of a precautionary response imperative – in +other words, policy should focus on buying insurance' [@greenpeace-report, p. +460]. The word choice – 'threat,' 'security,' 'insurance' – all coheres better +with the mental model of an impending instantaneous event than an epoch of +gradual and persistent change. This, then, is green rhetoric. Green rhetoric is that produced by people associated with the green movement in order to bring about solutions to that @@ -86,8 +126,3 @@ rhetors, if they are to play their proper part in delivering political change. - Evidence: environmental movement attracted middle-class members in the 1960s - Evidence: Silent Spring was significant in bringing about change - Evidence: environmental legislation was passed after Silent Spring -- Evidence: nuclear was once the master frame for the environmental movement -- Evidence: governments misled their citizens on nuclear war -- Evidence: anti-nuclear campaigners attacked government misinformation -- Evidence: anti-nuclear (apocalyptic) language -- Evidence: climate change is now the environmental movement's master frame |