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diff --git a/chapter1.md b/chapter1.md index 3f598e8..86d3b63 100644 --- a/chapter1.md +++ b/chapter1.md @@ -371,4 +371,25 @@ effective. \[EVIDENCE\] The result is that PMC people feel powerless. \[EVIDENCE\] -In summary, +In summary, green rhetoric is not working. I've explored some reasons why this +is so. Green rhetoric mis-diagnoses the root causes of the relevant problems by +putting harms down to individual consumption choices and science denial, whereas +in fact, these factors play a relatively small role in explaining ecological +harm, and other factors, such as industrial production decisions shaped by +markets, may be much more significant. A mis-diagnosis of the problem leads to +false solutions: austerity or 'de-growth', or 'smart' market fixes, neither of +which are not politically sustainable. This in turn is due to green rhetors +failing to take account of the powers and interests of their audience. Rhetors +speak as if they are addressing a universal human collective capable of acting +rationally in the universal human interest, asking them to take actions such as +setting binding emissions targets or transferring wealth from 'rich nations' to +'poor nations.' But in fact, green rhetors do not address the universal human +collective, but rather the Western middle classes, who may not have the right +powers and interests for such exhortations to be feasible. + +This begs the question: if green rhetoric is failing, how might it be fixed? In +what follows, I will not be proposing a practical manifesto for transforming the +green movement, but I will be engaging in blue-sky thinking, imagining what a +more successful green rhetoric might look like. In the next chapter, I will +examine the popular suggestion that a more successful green rhetoric would look +less apocalyptic. |