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diff --git a/chapter1.md b/chapter1.md index 0273a80..fea3c99 100644 --- a/chapter1.md +++ b/chapter1.md @@ -296,10 +296,59 @@ good for them, and thus their proposals are politically impossible. Taking another approach, many green rhetors advocate for a simple programme: listen to the science, then act rationally. This call to action suggests that the root cause of the relevant problems is that some relevant actors are not -responding rationally to the scientific evidence. \[EXAMPLE\]. +responding rationally to the scientific evidence. + +This is a dialectic favoured by the star climate campaigner, Greta Thunberg. In +February 2019, she spoke to a gathering of EU civil servants in Brussels: + +> We know that most politicians don't want to talk to us. Good, we don't want to +> talk to them either. We want them to talk to the scientists instead. +> [@no-one-is-too-small, pp. 53-54] + +In September of the same year, while the US government was halfway through the +4-year process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, she spoke at the US +Congress. In a speech which repeatedly referenced Martin Luther King Junior's 'I +have a dream' speech, she pleaded with legislators: + +> Perhaps it is impossible. But looking at those numbers – looking at the +> current best available science signed by every nation – then I think that is +> precisely what we are up against. But you must not spend all of your time +> dreaming, or see this as some political fight to win. And you must not gamble +> your children's future on the flip of a coin. Instead, you must unite behind +> the science. [@no-one-is-too-small, pp. 122-123] + +In their 1996 rationalist-environmentalist call to arms, _Betrayal of Science +and Reason_, Paul and Anne Ehrlich were explicit about how they saw the link +between science and government policy: + +> In short, people should have faith in their own judgment when they've taken +> the time to examine different views of an issue and taken into account their +> own predispositions and prejudices. Then they can become activists—devote as +> much of their time as possible to improving the human condition. The +> scientific community needs help in re-plotting humanity's trajectory toward a +> sustainable future. [@betrayal-science-reason, p. 212] The spectre of the 'science denier' or 'science fraudster' has traditionally -served as the main scapegoat of green rhetoric. For example, \[EXAMPLE\]. +served as the main scapegoat of green rhetoric. Much of _Betrayal and Science +and Reason_ is taken up with naming, exposing, and rebutting some of their +critics, whom they derogatively label 'brownlashes.' In Thunberg's speeches, she +has repeatedly proclaimed the narrative that 'we spoke the science and demanded +that the people in power would listen to and act on the science, but our +political leaders didn't listen' [@no-one-is-too-small, p. 134]. Dale Jamieson, +a philosopher at New York University, asked in 2014 why there had been so little +social-scale action to address the problems of climate change, and concluded +that the main factors were as follows: + +> We live in a society in which there is a cultural chasm between scientists and +> policy-makers. Most of us, including scientists, are largely confused about +> the relations between facts and values, and science and policy. Many of us are +> scientifically ignorant, and large sums have been spent to further confuse and +> misinform us. This has occurred against the background of rising cynicism, +> eroding respect for Enlightenment values, and dysfunctional political systems. +> Making things worse, climate change presents us with the largest collective +> action problem that humanity has ever faced, one that is extended both in space +> and time. It is not the sort of problem that Mother Nature raised us to solve +> or even to notice. [@reason-dark-time, pp. 103-104] However, there's no particular reason to think that the fossil fuel industry is scientifically incompetent or unable to act rationally. In fact, fossil fuel @@ -479,7 +528,6 @@ catastrophic language is counter-productive in this context. ## TODO - Find quotes and page numbers in @{back-to-nature} and @{heat} -- Find examples of 'listen to the scientists' and 'science denial' discourses - Find an example: green rhetor doing some soul-searching - Explore: magical green proposals - Explore: PMC people feel powerless because the actions they have taken aren't very effective |
