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

## 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'

@{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.