path: root/chapter2.md

## Chapter 2

Catastrophe is a prominent literary feature of contemporary green rhetoric. The
word 'catastrophe' first entered English through early modern translations of
Greek plays, meaning the denouement of a plot. Through association with
tragedies, it came to acquire connotations of disaster, and in the nineteenth
century, became closely associated with the (now antiquated) 'catastrophic'
theory of geological time, according to which distinct geological epochs were
divided by sudden cataclysmic events. [@oed-catastrophe]

Anti-nuclear campaigners used the word 'catastrophe' to describe the effects of
a nuclear war, echoing this model of geological time, suggesting that a nuclear
war would have such severe, irreversible consequences that it would represent
the next great cataclysm in geological time \[EVIDENCE\].

Whether or not green rhetors explicitly use the word 'catastrophe,' they often
imply a catastrophic model of the problems they present. When Extinction
Rebellion took to the streets of the UK in 2018, this was their message:

> The science is clear – we are in the sixth mass extinction event and we will
> face catastrophe if we do not act swiftly and robustly. [@xr-declaration]

The phrase 'sixth mass extinction event' categorises the present green crisis
alongside the traditional 'big five' mass extinction events of geological
history [@eb-extinctions], remnants of the catastrophic theory of geological
time. Their 'Declaration of Rebellion' used the word 'catastrophe' twice,
alongside words such as 'cataclysmic,' 'destruction,' 'crises,' 'dying planet,'
and 'uninhabitable' to reinforce the image.

Similarly, Greta Thunberg favours an imminent, catastrophic model of climate
change:

> \[FIND QUOTE\]

Catastrophic models of ecological futures are so dominant, that it can be hard
to imagine any other kind of story. This is eloquently demonstrated by the
novelist, Charles Foster, who set himself the challenge to 'reignite' his
readers' imaginations:

> I don't believe in climate change. \[…\] 'Yes, it's very bad. Yes, we're all
> going to die. Pass the salt, please. How's your homework going, Rachel?' \[…\]
> This exhaustion of our intellect, our compassion and our capacity for alarm
> is desperately dangerous. Only imagination can reignite them. And only story
> \[…\] can do the necessary imaginative job. We're dying for want of a story.
> \[FIND PAGE NUMBERS\]

The result was _Cry of the Wild_, a short story collection. One of those stories
follows a fictional orca called Eeschin as she lives through the extinction of
her pod due to marine pollution. The denouement of the story sees Eeschin
swimming alone, the last of her clan, unable and unwilling to adopt a new clan,
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. \[NEEDS MORE WORK\]

Recently, academics examining green rhetoric have raised concerns with this
catastrophism.

It has been claimed green catastrophism is fatalistic: that the catastrophe is
implicitly inevitable, thus encouraging despair over hope and therefore mere
ritual over action. To be sure, most green rhetors do not explicitly say this;
rather, they tend to say the very opposite, that it is not too late to avert the
catastrophe: that's why we have to act now! The problem is not that green
rhetors _assert_ that the catastrophe is inevitable, but that inevitability is
one of those symbols packaged together with the symbols of 'catastrophe,' and
indeed 'apocalypse.'

Part of this is due to the geological connotations of 'catastrophe.'
Paleontologists speculate about the causes of historic mass extinctions:
volcanic eruptions, asteroid strikes, cyclical climate fluctuations gone rogue?
One thing's for sure, there's nothing the dinosaurs could have done to stop it.

'Apocalypse' is also a fatalistic concept. This fatalism is obvious whenever
someone counts the days til doomsday. This begins with the prophet Daniel, who
reports that 'seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and thy holy city, to
finish the transgression' (Dan 9:24) and that 'from the time that the daily
sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up,
there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.' \[MORE DEMONSTRATION OF
FATALIST MILLENIALISM\]

\[EXAMPLE OF SCHOLAR SAYING THAT APOCALYPSE/CATASTROPHE IS FATALIST\]

A fatalistic outlook may, at best, lead to what Kvandal & Levy call
'ritualistic' behaviours: 'behaviours characterized by rigidity, compulsion, and
goal demotion.' [@kvandal-2025] That is, people feel compelled to act in rigidly
specific ways, even though they don't have a clear grasp on the practical
outcomes of their behaviour. Calling on the cognitive science of religion, the
authors assert that 'there is a general consensus that human beings tend to
ritualize more of their behavior when they lose agency under conditions of
stress, uncertainty, or hazards more generally.' They note the example of Greta
Thunberg sailing across the Atlantic in a zero-carbon vessel to speak at the
United Nations. The huge effort involved in that act seems disproportionate to
the small impact had on greenhouse gas emissions. The authors also raise
examples of civil disobedience motivated by climate pessimism. Fatalism might
lead to politically productive behaviours. But the fact that ritualistic
behaviours are severed from practical outcomes makes it a pretty bad bet:

> By not allowing for hope that the world can be salvaged, this form of social
> activism provides outlets in which activists alleviate anxiety by obtaining a
> (simulated) sense of agency in the face of an uncontrollable threat.
> [@kvandal-2025, p. 701]

Action directed at making you feel better might lead to change in your own life,
but it is not necessarily going to solve the problem that made you feel anxious
in the first place. Juli Gittinger has shown that fatalistic climate narratives
have driven some people in the US to join the 'prepper' movement, accumulating
stockpiles of essential goods, building emergency shelters, learning 'survival
skills,' and collecting weapons to defend your family's patch from desperate
outsiders. [@american-apocalyptic, see esp. chp. 3, 4] 'Prepper' culture (which
owes its existence to Cold War fears of all-out nuclear war
[@american-apocalyptic, pp. 48-56]) might be a minority pursuit, but it is a
response to the same apocalyptic storytelling which is a widespread phenomenon
in mainstream American media:

> The theme of _impending catastrophe_ \[…\] frames the news story
> as more apocalyptic and therefore often becomes more sensationalized or highly
> panic-driven. Add social media to this mix – where experts are often ignored
> in favor of more polemic non-experts – and risk perception increases. Oddly
> enough, impending catastrophe is less likely to alter behavior, instead
> inspiring feelings of futility: we’re doomed, so why bother. Repeated exposure
> to doomsday predictions can prevent us from taking action because ultimately
> the effect of apocalyptic thinking generates a fear of existential threats
> that are beyond our control – and thus unpreventable. [@american-apocalyptic, p. 60]

If fatalistic narratives don't cause their audiences to resign themselves to the
impending catastrophe, then they may also inspire resistance against those
narratives and the people who tell them. If what someone is telling you is
threatening to destroy the world as you know it, one way of coping with that
violent threat is to find a way to dismiss the speaker's credibility.

For example, Gill Ereaut and Nat Segnit document how some people in Britain
respond to fatalistic narratives about the climate with what they call
'settlerdom discourse.' [@warm-words pp. 7-8, cf. @warm-words-2 p. 21] By this,
they mean a discourse implying that whatever isn't 'common sense' isn't
credible. Using such a discourse, it is easy to dismiss alarmist climate
rhetoric as 'doom-mongering.' Closely related is the discourse of 'British comic
nihilism,' or, as they put it, the discourse of 'bugger it and open another
bottle!'

Green catastrophism may have political implications, too. It has been argued
that implicit in the catastrophist narrative is the assumption that everything
was going well until the catastrophe loomed its ugly head. This suggests that
'business as usual' is alright, and therefore obscures the need for a radical
critique of the business-as-usual political get-up which produces massive
destruction.

Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac provided one demonstration of this
mindset in _The Future We Choose_, which begins with an imaginative description
of two possible futures, one optimistic, one pessimistic. The optimistic vision
described an anthropocene paradise, a vision of how the human project to
transcend materiality might be finally accomplished by continuing technological
progress. To take the comments on energy, for example:

> In some ways, breaking up grids and decentralising power proved easy. We no
> longer burn fossil fuels. There is some nuclear energy in those countries that
> can afford the expensive technology, but most of our energy now comes from
> renewable sources like wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro. \[…\] Because there
> is no combustion cost, energy is basically free. It is also more abundant and
> more efficiently used than ever. Smart tech prevents unnecessary energy
> consumption, as artificial inteligence units switch off appliances and
> machines when not in use. The efficiency of the system means that, with a few
> exceptions, our quality of life has not suffered. In many respects, it has
> improved. [@future-we-choose, chp. 3]

This vision of the good life promotes the idea of technological progress driving
increasing living standards, a rising tide lifting all boats. This narrative
perpetuates the idea that more efficient technology can deliver a free lunch,
while ignoring the fact that modern technological progress led to increased
exploitation of workers and of nature. It accepts that the Earth has been
domesticated, and advocates for the Earth to be domesticated even more. As
Eileen Crist, discussing Anthropocene discourse, puts it:

> The very concept of the Anthropocene crystallizes human dominion, corralling
> the already-pliable-in-that-direction human mind into viewing our master
> identity as manifestly destined, quasi-natural, and sort of awesome. The
> Anthropocene accepts the humanization of Earth as reality, even though this is
> still contestable, partially reversible, and worthy of resistance and of
> inspiring a different vision. [@poverty-nomenclature, p. 25]

It gets worse for the catastrophist. Perhaps the most vicious criticism of green
catastrophism is that by leaning on 'Anthropocene' discourses, green rhetors
flatten out social relationships. This, say the critics, is the death of all
genuine politics. \[EXAMPLES\]

For Frances Flannery, Professor Emerita of Religion at James Madison University,
the upshot of all this is that 'We Must Stop Saying "Climate Apocalypse"'
[@flannery-2024].

Flannery emphasises that in popular imagination, 'apocalypse' signifies nothing
more than the end of the world, ignoring the world-creating aspects of biblical
apocalypses [@flannery-2024, p. 209]. This may be a legacy of Cold-War era
nuclear rhetoric and science fiction, which re-purposed the symbol 'apocalypse'
to describe the consequences of a nuclear war, while deliberately stripping the
disaster of any redemptive afterward [@wojcik-end-of-the-world, p. 1]. Thus, she
argues, the result of raising the threat of a 'climate apocalypse' is to 'create
passivity rather than spur on quick and cooperative climate action' and to inspire
mass climate anxiety. Such a fatalist narrative can also imply that human action
is irrelevant, or encourage audiences to put their hope in 'savior figures such
as inventors, scientists, or governments who might rescue humanity in the nick
of time.' [@flannery-2024, p. 210]

Flannery also adds a couple further reasons why apocalypse in particular, apart
from its connotations of catastrophe, might be an unhelpful symbol to apply to
climate change. For one, if millenialist Christians, who are politically
influential in places such as the United States and the Congo which are
significant for the global climate, are persuaded that climate change is a 'sign
of the times,' there's a risk that they will welcome climate change instead of
fighting it.

For another, she notes that in the Apocalypse of St John, the wicked are
punished and the righteous vindicated. Meanwhile, in the climate case, it is
people living in the Global South who are expected to suffer the most from
climate change. Thus, telling a narrative of 'climate apocalypse' from the
Global North suggests that people living in the Global North are the suffering
righteous who will be vindicated, and those in the Global South the wicked who
will be punished. But, in Flannery's view, this flips the script on the
historical facts, which show that climate change is if anything a result of the
'wickedness' of those living in the Global North.

We are now beginning to expose five major criticisms of the use of apocalyptic
language in green rhetoric:

1. Apocalyptic language is catastrophic and thus fatalistic.
2. Apocalyptic language is catastrophic and thus obstructs radical criticism of
   business as usual.
3. Apocalyptic language is catastrophic and thus flattens out power
   relationships.
4. Apocalyptic language is millenarian and thus promotes destruction.
5. Apocalyptic language is violent and vindictive.