---
bibliography: bibliography.bib
title: Dissertation scrapbook
author: Joe Carstairs
---

## Criticisms of green catastrophism

- Causes despair, nihilism, denial, or black comedy, instead of hope
  [@flannery-2024, @wojcik-end-of-the-world]
- Obscures human responsibility and implies that human action is irrelevant
  [@flannery-2024, @kvandal-2025, @apocalyptic-dimensions]
- Anthropocene discourse flattens out power relationships and thus kills
  politics [@kowalewski-environmental-apocalypse, @fagan-2017,
  @climate-change-class-war]
- Implies that business as usual is basically OK and looks for the old
  oppressors to save us [@apocalyptic-dimensions,
  @kowalewski-environmental-apocalypse, @climate-change-class-war,
  @green-utopias]
- Encourages ritualistic behaviour to make you feel better instead of effective
  action [@wojcik-end-of-the-world, @american-apocalyptic]

## Evidence that catastrophic green rhetoric causes alienation

- Lucy Jones' attitude before her second child in @{losing-eden}
- @{flannery-2024}
- Jim Bendell's essay in @{xr-not-a-drill}
- @{fear-wont-do-it}: fear appeals can cause apathy, denial, laughing it off,
  not wanting to think about it, disengagement
- @{warm-words}: results in settlerdom discourse shutting it down
- The introduction to @{cry-of-the-wild}: exhaustion of our capacity for alarm
- @{hickman-2021}

## Evidence that catastrophic green rhetoric blames the wrong people

- @{hickman-2021} shows many children feel guilty for climate change
- @{climate-change-class-war} points out that 'carbon footprinting' blames
  individual behaviour and ignores the industrial production decisions of the
  capitalist class, which is far more important. Professionals focus on their
  own private consumption and ignore class and production because they live
  separated from industrial production in knowledge work and thus see the
  solution as learn-know-act, because they lead high-consumption lifestyles, and
  because they believe in a meritocratic ideology. This emphasis on knowledge
  comes out in the 'believe the science' discourse

## Evidence that catastrophic green rhetoric obstructs appropriate responses to ongoing harms

- @{regeneration} and @{restoring-the-wild} demonstrate that conservationists
  eschew catastrophic narratives, and I think this is because such narratives
  obscure the importance of private interest, which is essential for these
  people to achieve their goals

## Evidence that catastrophic green rhetoric justifies violence and authoritarianism

## Examples of green rhetoric in which the audience is blamed or assumed to have power over the problem

- @{back-to-nature} is a particularly egregious example
- @{inconvenient-truth} must be a go-to. See the credits especially.
- @{forget-me-not}, especially the Epilogue
- @{greenpeace-report} is a particularly egregious example of the magic 'we'
- @{sarn-helen} implies that the reason we trash nature is because we culturally
  place too low a value on it
- @{cornerstones} describes how the human race has always, since primeval
  pre-history, acted in what they believe to be the collective interest, and
  therefore we share the blame equally for trashing nature

@{no-one-is-too-small}, @{xr-declaration}, and @{xr-not-a-drill} are good
contrasts: it emphasises that the audience is not, at least not entirely,
responsible.

## Examples of green rhetoric in which the catastrophe is final

Like, all of them.

Obvious examples include @{xr-declaration}, @{no-one-is-too-small},
@{greenpeace-report}. If we don't stop emitting CO2, everyone will die and/or
civilization will collapse.

@{inconvenient-truth} didn't quite have that narrative, but it did use Earthshot
and Pale Blue Dot very prominently, which I think was to communicate that what
is at stake is global, cosmic, total.

In @{cry-of-the-wild}, the catastrophe is final for the orca, Eeschin. While we
don't see her die, we know that her whole clan has died off, and she will refuse
til death to join another clan: the only way it can end is death, and thus the
total extinction of her clan.

### Examples of green rhetoric using core apocalyptic forms

The goal here is to persuade the reader that green rhetoric often uses literary
techniques which are distinctive of the genre, apocalypse.

Examples of the doomsday cluster of symbols includes almost every example of
green rhetoric I've read so far:

- @{silent-spring}
- @{heat}
- @{inconvenient-truth}
- @{xr-declaration}
- @{xr-not-a-drill}
- @{no-one-is-too-small}
- @{greenpeace-report}
- @{back-to-nature}
- @{forget-me-not}
- @{cry-of-the-wild}
- @{greenhouse-effect}

Green rhetoric almost always talks about the world system, so engages in cosmic
speculation by default. Almost all green rhetoric also imagines alternative
worlds, particularly alternative futures, whether utopic or dystopic. Pretty
much anything in the above list would include those symbols.

Examples of nesting contexts:

- @{greenhouse-effect}
- Chp 7, @{losing-eden}
- @{inconvenient-truth}
- @{xr-declaration}
- @{wilding}
- @{losing-eden}

The best examples of moral dualism:

- @{no-one-is-too-small}
- @{silent-spring}
- @{xr-declaration}
- @{back-to-nature}

The best examples of eschatological symbols:

- @{cry-of-the-wild}
- @{xr-not-a-drill}
- @{back-to-nature}
- @{inconvenient-truth}

For fatalism, see: @{xr-not-a-drill}, @{american-apocalyptic}.

For mythological symbolism, see: @{cry-of-the-wild}, @{xr-not-a-drill},
@{inconvenient-truth} (Revelation itself used as a mythological symbol!).

For exhortations to remain faithful, see: @{xr-not-a-drill}, @{cry-of-the-wild},
@{back-to-nature}, @{xr-declaration}, @{forget-me-not}.

For minority/revealed knowledge, see @{heat}, @{xr-not-a-drill},
@{silent-spring}. But be aware that the vast majority of green rhetoric uses
'majority' scientific knowledge as its rule, and often loudly celebrates this
fact.