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diff --git a/chapter2.md b/chapter2.md index 48b4d3f..2968604 100644 --- a/chapter2.md +++ b/chapter2.md @@ -61,10 +61,20 @@ facing with courage her grief and her own inevitable death. Even a talented writer such as Foster, intentionally seeking to break new imaginative ground for conceptualising green crises, seems unable to escape the motif of catastrophe. -Famously, the Apocalypse of St John prominently features cataclysmic events, -beginning with the opening of the first of the seven seals in chapter 6, -unleashing the notorious 'Four Horsemen.' Catastrophe can be considered an -apocalyptic literary feature. \[NEEDS MORE WORK\] +The word 'apocalypse' is sometimes used as if to stand for 'catastrophe.' +Of course, the Apocalypse of St John has a great deal in common with the concept +of a geological catastrophe. Cosmos-scale world-changing events destroy much of +the existing world order and its life-sustaining powers: the heavens are +rolled up like a scroll, the sun and moon are darkened, water turns to blood, +fire rains down from above. In its place, a new world order is established, +which enables different forms of life. Al Gore, in his influential global +warming campaign film, _An Inconvenient Truth_, was (and remains) typical in the +way he describes the consequences of certain floods and wildfires as 'like a +nature hike through the Book of Revelations' [@inconvenient-truth]. In the next +chapter, I will argue that reducing apocalypse to mere catastrophe misses out +important features of apocalyptic language as exemplified by St John, but for +now it is worth noting that some rhetors use allusions to the Apocalypse in order +to function as a catastrophic symbol. Recently, academics examining green rhetoric have raised concerns with this catastrophism. |