path: root/chapter2.md

## Chapter 2

Among the numerous complaints commentators have expressed about catastrophic
green rhetoric, I will examine three in particular. One, it is alleged that
catastrophic language encourages a fatalistic outlook and therefore
discourages effective political action. Second, catastrophe is supposed to
promote business as usual and shut down radical discourses. Third, critics
argue that catastrophic thinking flattens out power relationships and thus
contributes to the 'death of politics.' I will examine each of these
complaints in turn, but first I will explore where catastrophic language comes
from and how it ends up featuring in 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. In 1964, Tom Stonier wrote that
'even in a century marked by two "total" wars the totality of the catastrophe we
face in the threat of thermonuclear war is barely imaginable'
[@nuclear-disaster, p. 17], before going on to imagine just that, predicting not
only massive death from shockwaves, firestorms and fallout, but also stark
ecological imbalances leading to insect plagues, total destruction of plant life
and soils in many places, and sudden collapses of existing glaciers followed by
extremely cold weather which 'might initiate another ice age'
[@nuclear-disaster, p. 136].

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:

> Around the year 2030, 10 years 252 days and 10 hours away from now, we will be
> in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human
> control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know
> it. That is unless, in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all
> aspects of society have taken place, including a reduction of CO~2~ emissions
> by at least 50 per cent. [@no-one-is-too-small, p. 82]

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.

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 green
catastrophism. The first issue I will examine here is fatalism.

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.

Some apocalyptic movements and worldviews have also promoted fatalisms. One
notable contemporary movement is the modern pre-millenialist movement in the
USA. Pre-millenialists believe in the 'Rapture,' based on an interpretation of
Thess 4:17: 'then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together
with \[the dead in Christ\] in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.'

While pre-millenialists have traditionally been notable for rejecting the
apocalyptic vision of the USA as the New Jerusalem of Rev 21, and therefore
been at times able to point out distortions and injustices belonging to
mainstream American patriotic ideology [@unveiling-empire, pp. 3-15], the
pre-millenialist outlook is inescapably fatalist. As a result, when the 'social
gospel' movement took off in the late nineteenth century, some
pre-millenialists condemned the movement for failing to trust God's plan to
redeem the world in the end-times and trying to redeem the world by inferior
and vain human efforts instead [@unveiling-empire, p. 10]. Wes Howard-Brooke
and Anthony Gwyther have observed this contradictory situation:

> \[…\] in the 1950s-1970s, pre-millenialists were also taking frequent aim at what
> they saw as other U.S. cultural signs of the approaching End. Among their
> targets were television \[…\], consumerism, advancing technology, changes in
> gender roles in the family and workplace, the advent of the New Age movement,
> rock and roll, and homosexuality. One thing was certainly true about
> premillenialists: they were willing to look American culture in the eye and
> not flinch. Of course, they had no desire to repair the damage or heal the
> wounds; such malignant forces were simply further evidence that the Second
> Coming was getting closer and closer, and hence, the Rapture of the true
> believers. [@unveiling-empire, p. 14]

In the case of the green movement, a fatalistic outlook may, at best, lead to
what Kvandal & Levy call 'ritualistic' behaviours: 'behaviours characterized by
rigidity, compulsion, and goal demotion.' [@kvandal-2025] While this may not
serve as an adequate account of ritual behaviours in general, the authors'
point is this: green activists who hold a fatalistic outlook 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] and is sometimes also pursued as
a result of certain pre-millenialist beliefs [@unveiling-empire, p. 5]) 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!'

So, because catastrophic language tends to encourage a fatalist outlook, it
fails when it convinces -- since 'why bother trying when we're all stuffed
anyway?' -- and it fails when it doesn't -- since 'why pay attention to such
excitable nonsense?'

A second problem with catastrophic language is that it is conservative. Often,
catastrophist narratives tacitly assume that everything was going well until
The Catastrophe loomed its ugly head. This suggests that 'business as usual' is
alright, and that a solution to the problem, by definition, means a return to
normal. But if, as many political analysts contend, green harms are in fact an
inevitable consequence of business as usual, such narratives then obstruct the
radical political critique which will be necessary for a lasting solution to
green issues.

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]

So catastrophic language, apart from its fatalist tendencies, can shut down
radical political discourses and thus discredit the best solutions to green
problems before they've even been proposed. But perhaps the most vicious
criticism of green catastrophism is that since green catastrophism reverberates
strongly with 'Anthropocene' discourses, such rhetoric flattens out power
relationships. This, say the critics, is the death of all genuine politics.

Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg, to take one typical example, argue that the
Anthropocene discourse of climate catastrophe emphasises the 'anthropos', the
universal human subject, implying that social relations within the human species
are relatively unimportant, and what matters is some universal, natural trait of
the biological species, such as greed or the ability to make fire.

> Climate change is _denaturalised_ in one moment – relocated from the sphere of
> natural causes to that of human activities – only to be _renaturalised_ in the
> next, when derived from an innate human trait, such as the ability to control
> fire. Not nature, but human nature – this is the Anthropocene displacement. It
> backs away from the vertiginous depth of what is perhaps the most
> ground-breaking scientific discovery of our time, which tells us that human
> beings have caused global warming over the course of their _history_.
> [@malm-hornborg-2014, pp. 65-66]

Such thinking is dominant in popular thinking about climate change. Climate
change is conceived as a product of human beings greedily over-exploiting
natural resources, and in particular, burning fossil fuels. Anthropocene
discourse is also almost always catastrophic: the arrival of the Anthropocene is
equivalent to the end of the Holocene, defined as the time when the climate was
hospitable to the growth of human civilization, but human beings were balanced
against the powers of other species. Human domination has upset this imbalance,
and the Anthropocene is thus inherently perceived as a threat to human survival.
Most mainstream catastrophist narratives about climate change adopt this
Anthropocene framing.

In sum, green catastrophism is accused of encouraging a fatalist outlook,
disarming radical discourses in favour of business as usual, and deeping harmful
'post-politics' discourses by obscuring the importance of power relationships.
In all these ways, catastrophic language in green rhetoric can work to actively
de-motivate audiences to play their part in bringing about the green movement's
desired outcomes.

## TODO

- Find quotes & page numbers in @{cry-of-the-wild}