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Diffstat (limited to 'chapter1.md')
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1 files changed, 12 insertions, 11 deletions
diff --git a/chapter1.md b/chapter1.md index 9a8aab8..b27667b 100644 --- a/chapter1.md +++ b/chapter1.md @@ -8,16 +8,18 @@ reserves, in the last thirty years, most of the key social-scale demands of the green movement have not been met, and even some of those earlier successes have been partially rolled back. -- Tropical deforestation is accelerating -- Plastic pollution is increasing at an accelerating rate -- Public infrastructure is more, not less, car-dependent -- Overfishing is intensifying -- Green New Deal is nowhere to be seen -- Water pollution has gone backwards (in the UK at least) -- Energy transition shows few signs of starting (though consider obvious - objections: falling coal consumption in China, increasing renewable energy - production, car electrification) -- Greenhouse gas emissions are increasing at an accelerating rate +Human beings have burned more coal since 1987 than they did from 1800 until +1987, and more oil and gas since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1993 than +between 1800 and that time [@owid-fossil-fuels; @energy-inst-2025; @smil-2017]. +Once upon a time, environmental campaigners declared that 400 parts of carbon +dioxide per million in the atmosphere ought to be an uncrossable red line: last +year, the figure ticked steadily up past 428 [@noaa-co2]. Without changes to +government policies, plastic pollution is set to triple between 2020 and 2040 +[@breaking-plastic-wave]. Since 1974, the proportion of the world's fish stocks +deemed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation to be within sustainable +levels has fallen from 90% to 62% [@unfao-fish-stocks]. The Living Planet Index, +the WWF's measure of wildlife populations, has declined by almost three quarters +since 1970 [@living-planet]. All these failures beg the question: why aren't the green movement's strategies working? \[EXAMPLE OF GREEN LEADER ASKING THIS QUESTION\] In particular, I want @@ -476,7 +478,6 @@ catastrophic language is counter-productive in this context. ## TODO - Find quotes and page numbers in @{back-to-nature} and @{heat} -- Explore and evidence: the green movement is on the back foot - Find examples of 'listen to the scientists' and 'science denial' discourses - Find an example: green rhetor doing some soul-searching - Explore: magical green proposals |