path: root/log.md

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

## 2026-05-06

### @{uninhabitable-earth}

A classic case in climate doomerism.

### @{against-climate-doom}

Argues for optimism about the future regarding climate, because good things are
happening and have already happened.

### @{hickman-2021}

An article in the Lancet claiming to prove that climate anxiety, and feelings of
helplessness, despair, powerlessness, fear, and betrayal by governments are
widespread amongst children in many countries.

### @{science-under-siege}

I found an excerpt online from this talking about doomerism. A ploy of the
plutocrats and petrostates, as well as influencers just looking for views. They
smear the science as 'hopium' and portray scientists as addicts and dealers.

### @{wwf-climate-doomers}

You can't trust doomers, because that's a lie employed as a rhetorical tactic by
the bad people to keep you from exercising your power. In fact, you do have
power, which you can exercise by washing your laundry in cold water, talking
about your action with your friends, voting. We need everyone to take part, and
lots of good things might happen if we all do it together all over the world.

I think the appeal that you have power is not effective, and serves to make me
feel powerless, and distrust the author. However, I noticed that the author is
effective at dealing with the doomer narrative, very aware that this text cannot
stand in isolation, but the audience receives it as part of a diverse literary
landscape, deals with counter-narratives: they're bad people in it for profit.

### www.tiktok.com/\@charlesmcbryde

The planet isn't dying, it's being murdered, by fascist politicians and the
fossil fuel lobby that props them up. For the good thing to happen, they need to
be stripped of their power.

### www.tiktok.com/\@thegarbagequeen

People tell you that we're cooked, but they're wrong, because, as the IPCC
points out, we can still do things to mitigate climate change by drastically
reducing carbon emissions, and we can adapt to the impacts of climate change,
too. Also, the activism we did in the past led to technologies getting cheaper
and solutions getting developed, and we know it works because the fossil lobby
spends billions of dollars fighting against us.

### @{nightingale-2020}

Lots of interesting comments on why managerialist discourses obscure what's
really going on. Posit nature and society as separate, not connected. Lead to
techno-managerial solutions instead of political-economic ones, therefore fail.
Lots and lots of references to investigate further. I didn't have time just now.

### @{climate-change-class-war}

Criticises 'carbon footprint' and 'believe the science' discourse. This obscures
the truth: climate change is a class problem. The only solution is class action.

### @{warm-words}

The whole language landscape affects how a text is received; so one text may
express one view, another the opposite, and the net result for the audience is:
I guess nobody really knows, even though neither of the texts said that!

Alarmist rhetoric gets shut down by settlerdom discourse: common sense, comic
nihilism.

## 2026-05-05

### George Monbiot

I associate George Monbiot with catastrophism, so I went hunting for it. Lucky
for me, he posts a lot on his website, including his articles for the Guardian.
Good man.

- @{monbiot-2026-04-29}
- @{monbiot-2024-11-17}
- @{monbiot-2023-08-08}

I could no doubt spend much more time digging out many more examples.

### 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.

I've added this to my scratchbook.

### 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.

I've added this to my scratchbook.

### Meeting with David de Pomerai

I met David (for the first time properly, having only seen him at the
dissertation proposal assessment day) at the Mound Café at 11am for 1 hour.

We had a long, unfocused discussion about the subject matter. It's clear he
finds the subject matter interesting and important. We weren't immediately on
the same page, which challenged me to explain what I've found and what I'm
trying to do with my research. He listened well and seems on board with the
project. We didn't have any extended disagreements that I recall.

Some particular problems:

- Green rhetoric seems to be moving away from apocalyptic forms, and with good
  reason: why jump on board a sinking ship?
- What else but apocalypse can communicate the appropriate urgency?
- In John's Apocalypse, only the elect/martyrs are saved, but climate change
  will harm everyone, even the rich and powerful
- Apocalypses should be told from the perspective of John of Patmos, not Caesar:
  do you and I, then, have any right to use apocalypse in green rhetoric?
- Martyrdom ethics seems foreign to a culture where few die for any great cause,
  but is costly resistance/sacrifice part of martyrdom ethics?
- He agreed that contemporary green apocalypse echoes nuclear rhetoric
- He came to agree that the idea of a future, sudden catastrophe on the model of
  a nuclear war is not an appropriate model for a threat like climate change
- He seemed resistant to the idea that you and I can't really do anything about
  climate change

I made him aware that my proposed dates for handing in draft chapters are only
guidelines and are likely to get shoved around: he didn't seem bothered by this
in the slightest.

We agreed to meet approximately once a month or more frequently if we needed to
discuss something specific. Tuesdays work well for him.

We had protracted difficulties communicating over email: some system between me
and him seems to be blocking communication. We agreed to communicate over
WhatsApp in future, and he gave me his phone number.

### @{ritchie-not-the-end}

Ritchie pulls out a lot of stats to try and persuade the reader that, with the
right individual consumption choices and government policies, the world's major
ecological problems are resolveable, and it's not a moonshot, it's very
feasible. The responses she proposes:

- Eat less meat and dairy
- Improve global crop yields
- Reduce system food waste
- Don't do indoor farming
- Swap fossil fuels for renewables and nuclear
- Swap driving for public transport, walking and cycling
- Stop cooking on wood and charcoal
- Remove sulphur from fossil fuels before burning them
- End winter crop-burning in India
- Rich countries pay poor countries to not chop forests down
- End world poverty
- Government should force industry to pay for the cost of dealing with plastic
  pollution
- Fine fishermen for losing plastic goods in the ocean
- Rich countries stop sending plastic waste to poor countries
- Grow economies in the developing world, so they become rich like us and demand
  their governments to stop leaking plastic everywhere
- Build better landfill sites in the developing world

@{quentin-salt-2023} had major issues:

- Cherry-picking optimistic facts and ignoring possible threats to support her
  'urgent optimistic' conclusion
- Rests hope in renewables, cutting beef consumption, improving crop yields and
  so on, to enable sustainable economic growth, ignoring the fact that so far,
  economic growth has been strongly linked to all her indexes of environmental
  harm, no evidence of decoupling at a global scale, ignoring the question of
  whether we even have time to 'grow, slow and then stop', assumes that
  environmental harms are reversible and manageable...
- Ignores the role of vested interests in preventing society-scale change
- Ignores the elephant in the room: tipping points

## 2026-05-04

My key task for today is to collect a list of 'core apocalyptic forms'. What are
these, what are they for? I intend to argue that there are better and worse ways
of using apocalyptic forms in green rhetoric. It follows that I need to identify
apocalyptic forms, I need to persuade my reader that HERE is an example of an
apocalyptic form. I may also want to talk about the rhetoric of John of Patmos
or other ancient apocalyptic authors, so my 'core apocalyptic forms' should
ideally cover ancient apocalypses as well as modern ones.

In short, my 'core apocalyptic forms' should:

- Identify literary features of good green rhetoric
- Identify literary features of bad green rhetoric
- Identify literary features of ancient apocalypse
- Identify literary features of modern apocalypse

### Ideas from my reading so far

- TEOTWAWKI, or the end of 'a' world [@american-apocalyptic; @flannery-2024]
- The end times [@thompson-revelation; @flannery-2024; @vielhauer-apocalypses;
  @revelation-vision-of-a-just-world]
- Catastrophe / doomsday [@revealed-wisdom, @oxford-handbook-apocalyptic,
  @thompson-revelation]
- Mythological symbolism [@revelation-vision-of-a-just-world; @ultimate-things]
- Fatalism [@revealed-wisdom; @flannery-2024; @ultimate-things;
  @vielhauer-apocalypses]
- Judgement [@flannery-2024; @ultimate-things]
- Miraculous ultimate deliverance [@revealed-wisdom; @flannery-2024;
  @ultimate-things]
- Decline or end of civilization [@oxford-handbook-apocalyptic]
- Rapture [@oxford-handbook-apocalyptic]
- Decoding world events [@oxford-handbook-apocalyptic]
- End of the future [@kowalewski-environmental-apocalypse]
- Millenium [@oxford-handbook-apocalyptic; @apocalyptic-patterns]
- Nesting contexts [@thompson-revelation]
- Exhortations to remain faithful [@thompson-revelation]
- Minority/revealed knowledge [@thompson-revelation; @open-heaven;
  @revelation-vision-of-a-just-world]
- Alternative worlds, cosmic speculation [@ultimate-things;
  @revelation-vision-of-a-just-world; @ratlos;
  @revelation-vision-of-a-just-world]
- Theodicy [@revelation-vision-of-a-just-world]
- Visions/dreams [@ultimate-things; @revelation-vision-of-a-just-world;
  @vielhauer-apocalypses]
- Angelic intermediary [@ultimate-things; @revelation-vision-of-a-just-world;
  @ratlos]
- Pseudonymity [@revelation-vision-of-a-just-world, @ultimate-things;
  @vielhauer-apocalypses]
- Moral dualism [@ultimate-things]
- Eschatological dualism [@vielhauer-apocalypses]
- Ex eventu prophecy [@ultimate-things; @vielhauer-apocalypses]

### Narrowing it down

These all seem pretty irrelevant to contemporary literature:

- Ex eventu prophecy
- Visions/dreams
- Angelic intermediaries
- Pseudonymity
- Theodicy

Then there are a few symbols particularly associated with millenialist culture,
but less relevant to green rhetoric:

- Rapture
- Decoding world events
- Millenium

There's a cluster of closely related symbols here, which are probably the most
common in green rhetoric:

- Catastrophe
- Cataclysm
- TEOTWAWKI
- The end of 'a' world
- Doomsday
- End of the future
- Decline or end of civilization

There are a random mix of symbols which are common and significant in green
rhetoric:

- Nesting contexts
- Alternative worlds, cosmic speculation
- Moral dualism

There are a cluster of eschatological symbols which occasionally appear on the
fringes of green rhetoric:

- The end times
- Eschatological dualism
- Miraculous ultimate deliverance
- Judgement

Then there's a random mix of symbols which appear from time to time:

- Fatalism
- Mythological symbolism
- Exhortations to remain faithful
- Minority/revealed knowledge

### 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.

I've added this to my scratchbook.

## 2026-05-01

I had a long think about the argument I want to make in my dissertation. I came
up with the following idea.

Question: how can apocalyptic literary forms be used well in green rhetoric?

Answer: to use apocalyptic literary forms well, green rhetors should not exhort
their audiences to avert an impending catastrophe, but rather exhort them to
adopt a martyrdom ethic in response to an immanent catastrophe. This has certain
consequences for the sorts of literary features and rhetorical contexts are
appropriate for apocalyptic green rhetoric, and suggests that some apocalyptic
literary forms could fruitfully be exploited more than they are at present by
rhetors.

Structure:

1. Introduction
2. Avoid exhorting the audience to avert the catastrophe
   1. The rhetorical strategy is...
   2. It moved from nuclear issues to green issues in the 1980s
   3. This rhetorical strategy can use core apocalyptic forms
   4. Using apocalyptic forms in this way has literary consequences
      - The catastrophe is final, destroys everything worth living for
      - The audience is blamed for the problem
      - The audience is assumed to have power over the problem
   5. This strategy doesn't work and makes bad things happen
      - The audience doesn't have power over green catastrophes, thus alienated
      - Obscures green harms happening now, obstructing appropriate responses
      - Blames the wrong people for green harms
      - Justifies 'whatever it takes' -- authoritarianism, violence
3. Exhort the audience to endure the catastrophe
   1. The rhetorical strategy is...
   2. St John (arguably) used core apocalyptic forms to this end
   3. Using apocalyptic forms in this way had literary consequences for St John
      - The catastrophe is immanent, not future
      - Deliverance is final, not the catastrophe (tribulation!)
      - The audience are assumed to have no power over the outcome
      - Acknowledges human agency and responsibility
      - The audience are assumed to be able to resist Evil in some way
      - Requires a resilient good -- best to use mythological language
      - Must come from the margins, not the centre
   4. This strategy has been tried by green rhetors
   5. This strategy works and makes good things happen
      - Doesn't ask the impossible
      - Banishes panic
      - Encourages local action
      - Awakens the complacent
      - Encourages resistance to dominant systems
   6. This strategy, as currently deployed, under-exploits apocalyptic forms
      - Ultimate vindication
      - Mythological language
      - Subaltern sources of authority
4. Summary

Now, what do I need in order to write this dissertation?

For chapter 2, I'll need:

- A list of shared forms between nuclear rhetoric and green rhetoric
- Examples of catastrophic nuclear rhetoric
- Examples of catastrophic green rhetoric demonstrating the close link with
  nuclear rhetoric, many of which should be from the same time period as the
  peak of nuclear catastrophe rhetoric
- A list of 'core apocalyptic forms'
- Examples of green rhetoric using 'core apocalyptic forms'
- Examples of green rhetoric using the features listed in 2.4
- Evidence that catastrophic green rhetoric causes alienation
- Evidence that catastrophic green rhetoric obstructs appropriate responses to
  ongoing green harms
- Evidence that catastrophic green rhetoric blames the wrong people, i.e.
  evidence that major green harms are not fairly blamed on the behaviour of
  ordinary people
- Evidence that catastrophic green rhetoric justifies violence and
  authoritarianism

For chapter 3, I'll need:

- Evidence that this is St John's rhetorical strategy
- A list of 'core apocalyptic forms' -- the same as in chapter 2
- Examples of St John using the 'core apocalyptic forms'
- Examples of St John using the features listed in 3.3
- Examples of apocalyptic green rhetoric meeting these criteria
- Evidence that such rhetoric banishes panic
- Evidence that such rhetoric encourages local action
- Evidence that such rhetoric awakens the complacent
- Evidence that such rhetoric encourages resistance to dominant systems
- Examples of ancient apocalypse using the features listed in 3.6
- Evidence that green rhetoric can use the features listed in 3.6 to make good
  things happen

In order to achieve this, I've created tasks.md and followed up with David de
Pomerai in an attempt to get him to pick up the phone and check over my plan of
action!

## 2026-04-30

### @{apocalyptic-complex}

The essays largely cover the reception of ancient apocalyptic literature in a
variety of contexts not obviously relevant to my dissertation: medieval
Christendom, medieval Judaism, the German Enlightenment, post-communist Ukraine,
Philip Pullman's novels, contemporary Jihadism.

From the introduction, I learned that Obama had been identified as the
Antichrist during the 2008 Presidential election campaign by a Republican party
TV advert, Tim LeHaye and Hal Lindsey among others.

I also found this argument interesting: despite the existence of many other
ancient apocalypses, the Apocalypse of St John is ground zero for the genre now,
because, due to its place in the Christian canon, it has had far more influence
than any other apocalypse, ancient or modern.

### @{cry-of-the-wild}

There were three epigraphs, one a 2016 report from the World Economic Forum
estimating that ocean plastic would outweigh fish by 2050, alongside the second,
quoting Rom 8:19,22 in both Greek and NRSV, which features the word 'apocalypse'
and apocalyptic imagination, the creation groaning in expectation.

The introduction had interesting reflections on the role of imagination in green
issues. 'I don't believe in climate change.' It's too big to imagine, I'm numbed
to catastrophic news and forecasts. 'Yes, it's very bad. Yes, we're all going to
die. Pass the salt, please. How's your homework going, Rachel?' He says: '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.' This
book presents 'new-old stories of the natural world from the perspective of the
besieged.'

So Foster's goal is to restore his readers' capacity to be alarmed, presumably
by descriptions of present or future catastrophes. He thinks that many of his
readers are no longer (implicitly: once were) capable of being alarmed by such
news and forecasts.

I focused on the story of Eeschin the orca. A few observations:

First, the story describes a kind of apocalypse. It is the end of Eeschin's
world, the end of her clan, the death of her people. It uses apocalyptic
symbols, particularly plague and judgement. It is in the secular apocalyptic
tradition in which there is no world-transformation at the end, but the
catastrophe is final, there is no future after the catastrophe.

Secondly, Eeschin can endure the end of her world and 'did not panic', because
she has stories that enable her to make meaning out of her loss ('This could not
have been borne unless it was turned into an epic'), and because she has a
non-dominating, engaged relationship with the world ('She lived in a world that
really existed'). It's possible that the apocalyptic end of her world revealed
what it was that she really needed: her stories and her relationship with the
world.

It was very moving and made me damp at the eyes. It serves as an example of how
someone might face an apocalypse with resilience. However, it is different than
the rhetorical strategy of typical apocalypses, because the apocalypse is not
one the reader is facing or may face, even imaginatively: it is someone else's
apocalypse.

### @{forget-me-not}

The climate crisis has already arrived, and it may soon be 'too late to turn
back', we have only 11 years (from 2019, quo IPCC) to avoid catastrophe. But
government action, COPs, IPCC, is all hot air. (Interesting mixture of
catastrophe-then and catastrophe-now models.)

Pavelle doesn't want you to panic. Panicked people make poor decisions. She
wants you to go outside and fall in love with nature.

The bees are disappearing, but you can help by planting flowers in a window box.

Epilogue: I could write a utopia or a dystopia, but I don't want to, because
both futures are possible. It's up to us to decide which we get. We need to make
tough calls, lean on science, and have faith in ourselves.

I like the move to restore relationships with nature, but I dislike the idea
that 'we' (that mysterious 'we' again) get to decide. I as an individual can't
decide whether we get a utopia or a dystopia, that's up to much bigger systems
than I can control, there's a hidden appeal to big global institutions to save
us, and an idea that you and I are somehow responsible for what those
institutions do. Lean on science, I'm not sure how I feel about that narrative.

It is an interesting book demonstrating that multiple rhetorical agendas can be
overlaid in the same text. Should I restore my personal relationship with nature
as the catastrophe unfolds, or should I work to avert the catastrophe? Should I
take local action myself, or try to steer institutional action? Should I have
faith in my own powers, or learn to accept and live well with my powerlessness?

### @{rewild-yourself}

There was a theme of magic throughout. 'Magic trousers' are waterproof trousers,
they enable you to be out in bad weather. Going to the Cornish coast, the realm
of the gannets, is like going through the back of the wardrobe, crossing worlds.

The magic theme was very shallow. What it was was 23 practical tips for getting
outside and getting in touch with nature. There was a thin layer of magic/spell
language pasted on the top.

The book demonstrates the idea that what we need to do is restore our
relationship with the natural world. However, it reinscribes the human/nature
distinction by imagining nature as another world you need to step through the
back of the wardrobe in order to get to.

### @{back-to-nature}

The stated goal of this book was to get you to take some individual action,
giving examples including taking the bus, eating less meat or joining a protest.
It used a hodgepodge of different rhetorical strategies, many of which I utterly
despised, though some were better. There were some interesting examples of these
strategies:

- Threatening impending apocalyptic catastrophe to support government action
- Individual action is the ultimate cause, so individual change of behaviour is
  the only solution
- We are complicit: don't be complicit! Don't tolerate apocalyptic evil!
- What we need to do is respond rationally to the scientific facts, the problem
  is we don't behave rationally enough or don't listen to the scientific facts
- Community projects are better than top-down approaches, and they begin by
  putting up gates to keep out the bad people, ie the homeless and those
  suffering from drug addiction
- Apocalyptic language can wake us up from our complacent stupor

In fact, I already hated it by the time they'd stated the problem. The mystery
for the authors is to explain 'our human reluctance to change our mindsets and
behaviours', and in particular, why the scientific facts are not enough to do
that, but in contrast tend to arouse offence, in their view, the most important
obstacle to conservation. The answer, according to them, rests in the fact that
political thought is associated with the prefrontal cortex, which happens to
also be associated with personal expression; as well as the psychological theory
of optimism bias and brain scans revealing that human beings struggle to take
action in respond to gradual threats. They assert that in order for human beings
to do anything, they need to be trained in a Skinner box to do that thing: this
is a sad scientific fact.

This to me was utterly bizarre and made me angry. Not only did they assume that
the best way of explaining human behaviour is by scanning their brains or
turning to psychological rules of thumb, ignoring cultural or rational
explanations altogether and reducing human beings to dumb machines, they also
assumed that the key problem for conservation is individual behaviours, ignoring
culture, politics, and economics. Ugh!

This emphasis on individual action, and ignorance of systemic issues, ran
through the book. Plastic pollution is caused by me and you littering, and the
right responses are beach cleans, 3 Rs, ethical consumption, and signing a
petition. 'Hope is the driver that underpins all these actions [...] Remember,
you're in the driving seat and the corporations and big companies are your
wheels. If you turn right, they will turn right too. Eventually.' The book
concludes with an assertion that 'we can make a difference'.

The better side of this came out in a later chapter, when the authors played the
judge, and declared various groups guilty: politicians, the mass media, the
industry leaders. But then they turned to us: we are also guilty, because we
prefer to go along with it rather than risk conflict. The author reflected on
how they regularly fed treats with palm oil to their dogs, contrasted the joy of
their dogs with the destruction of the rainforests, and decided that this could
no longer be tolerated.

This passage got me thinking: what does resisting the temptation of the Beast
look like today, with a green focus? The rhetorical line here seems really quite
like John's.

There was an apocalyptic narrative of a community project in Holyland, Belfast,
which was diabolical in a way I haven't encountered much yet. It was a
transformation story, and the transformation started by -- this is a genuine
quote -- when the community 'put up some gates to keep out the reprobates'. Holy
smokes! That's not the kind of green apocalypse we want.

There was also an apocalyptic narrative around the Climate and Ecological
Emergency Bill, encouraging people to write to their MP or join a protest in
support of the Bill. According to the Climate Change Committee, net zero by 2050
only gives a "'greater than fifty per cent' [...] chance of avoiding climate
catastrophe". The Committee recommended preparing for 2-4C of warming, 'for
which read ... Armageddon. [...] the end of life as we know it.' A good
illustration of how apocalyptic symbols and forms can be used to try and
motivate political action, and in particular action to avoid an impending future
catastrophe.

As examples of action, the authors raised: gardening, ethical consumption, art.
But they ultimately placed a higher value on political activism. Their models
are Greta Thunberg, Ghandi, MLK and (curiously) Spartacus. We know that Greta
Thunberg is a good model because thousands of people joined her movement around
the worldand she got lots of praise and even money. We should be like Greta and
take action, whatever action we can.

To me, this emphasis on hero-activists is alienating and makes me want to stay
at home, because I don't believe that I will be the one-in-a-million who will
start a massive movement, and therefore don't believe that I can make any
significant difference. The emphasis is on making a difference: implicitly,
then, if you can't make a difference (almost all of us) you might as well stay
at home.

There was a decent bit on p290 arguing that we have come to increasingly accept
the catastrophe, the numbers have lost their meanings, we forget that they are a
death toll. 'We must wake up from our complacent stupor, because as every one of
us knows, we are presiding over a very real ecological apocalypse and conducting
a mass extermination in our own backyard, literally my backyard and yours. [...]
But, critically, it is not too late; there is hope and a lot more besides. [...]
We can make a difference. [...] We don't all have to agree about all the
details, but we must agree on our shared agenda.' I liked the idea that we need
to 'wake up from our complacent stupor' and the role of apocalyptic language to
achieve that, but disliked that idea that 'we' (whoever that is) are in control.

### @{green-utopias}

Garforth pointed out that climate apocalypses are out there and having both
revolutionary and conservative effects. We cannot change this just by wishing it
to be so. The question that remains for us is, what do we use climate apocalypse
to do, if we use it at all? Her suggestion is to use it to criticise
conservative discourses.

I found her description of conservative discourses helpful, and found her idea
interesting that apocalypses can be used to criticise these discourses. I didn't
understand the idea that conservative approaches 'de-politicise' things, but I'm
curious. She provided lots of useful references for the subject of conservative
environmental discourses and criticisms of climate apocalyptic. @{future-ethics}
also came up a lot for chapters in favour of climate apocalypse.

Garforth discussed 'adaptation and mitigation', 'limits' and 'sustainability'
discourses, as well as 'environmental modernization theory.' In her view, these
discourses frame the environmental problem as a market failure, an externality
that needs to be internalised, achieved by incremental economistic improvements
within existing power frameworks, particularly nation-states and the UN. High
water marks of this movement include Kyoto, Bali 2007, the EU ETS, and the fad
for carbon calculators.

Good folk to read on this are: @{why-we-disagree}, @{new-tech-env-innovation},
@{ecological-modernisation}, @{ecological-modernization-theory},
@{politics-climate-change}, @{hulme-2008}.

Naess, the founder of 'deep ecology', criticised limits discourse for being
anthropocentric, and favoured an ecocentric view.

Garforth criticised these discourses -- carbon calculators in particular -- for
limiting green desire to individual market choices, a better self and a better
lifestyle but not a better society, not a better idea of what it means for human
beings to be well. @{seeds-dystopia} argued that these discourses are bad
because they seek to manage unsustainability, depoliticise, dissolve radicalism,
they are post-politics, rule out new ideas about how humans can be free and
well.

Garforth argued that apocalypse can fight back against post-politics,
re-politicise the issues, bring back the prospect of a different future which
post-politics closes off. Apocalypse can also give gravity, urgency to the
issues, which the modernization discourses don't. She argued that the best
apocalypses for this purpose are 'immanent', a constantly unfolding crisis,
rather than apocalypses with an 'end', since their role is to get us to live
well and make ethical decisions during the currently ongoing environmental
crisis. See also @{future-ethics}.

She pointed out that climate change is a wicked problem, and it is not possible
to simply recognise it, respond to it, and resolve it. It requires many messy
responses. See @{why-we-disagree}. I think this is a good corrective to
Thunberg's rhetoric, implying that our problems would be solved if only the
politicians recognised the gravity of the threat, listened to the scientists,
and behaved like grown-ups.

She raised some criticisms of climate apocalypse: it causes apathy, anxiety
without agency, mere entertainment, or scares folk into authoritarian solutions.
For more on this, see @{anthropocene-fictions}, @{future-ethics},
@{fear-wont-do-it}, @{warm-words}, @{sustaining-unsustainable},
@{swyngedouw-2010}.

## 2026-04-29

### @{american-apocalyptic}

The big idea in this book is that apocalyptic is an American civic religion that
cuts across the usual religious identity-markers. She was particularly
interested in how American apocalyptic feeds prepper culture.

I like that she showed how climate apocalypse narratives are not self-contained
but draw on much wider symbolic resources. Americans are already living in an
apocalyptic culture. For my dissertation, this means I can't recommend a kind of
apocalyptic literature as if I get to control how it is received. Prepper
culture was also an interesting excursion into one way that green apocalypses
can make things happen. I thought her distinctions between big-A Apocalypse and
small-a apocalypses and between religious and secular apocalypse were helpful.

Some interesting observations from the Introduction:

- Apocalypse can be understood as The End Of The World As We Know It --
  TEOTWAWKI is a common acronym in prepper circles
- Small-a apocalypses happen frequently: Noah, Trail of Tears, Hiroshima,
  Nagasaki, WW2
- Secular apocalyptic developed in the twentieth century, particularly after
  1950ish. Traditional religious apocalyptic gives meaning to the events and
  contains supernatural events and cosmic transformation, but in contrast,
  secular apocalyptic tends to present cataclysms as meaningless, secular, and
  without redemption. However, they may imply that when the old world is swept
  away, it may make room for a new one.

Some interesting observations from Chp7, 'Climate apocalypse':

- Capital-A Apocalypses vs small-a apocalypses
- 'Anthropocene' discourse is a secular eschatology
- Delf Rothe has three models of Anthropocene discourse: catastrophism (disaster
  movies), modernism (technological progress), realism (quietism?)
- Problems with realism: it presumes that ecological harms are natural and/or
  inevitable, thus frees oppressors from accountability
- Narratives of impending catastrophe don't inspire action: see Chp 3 on the
  mass media
- McNeish 2017: moralising apocalypses to get you to recycle are self-defeating
- Ertelt 2018: climate apocalypse is borne out of nuclear winter discourse, thus
  inherits its fatalism, and continues to function as a secular religion
- Preppers have an ethic of care, 'eco-piety'
- Preppers also have an ethic of self-preservation and a 'lifeboat narrative'

## 2026-04-28

### @{apocalyptic-dimensions}

Oegema claimed that the way to make apocalyptic literature relevant is to strip
it of mythology and translate its core message (or the good bits of it, anyway)
into secular, scientific, technological language. New heaven and new earth are
to be swapped out for technological progress. This seems to me all wrong.
Firstly, I think stripping apocalyptic of mythological language robs it of its
most powerful rhetorical instrument and probably kills it. Secondly, scientific
technological language cannot fill the hole left by mythological language,
because it has no power to nest the reader into larger imaginative context, and
probably other things, but I'm struggling to form the ideas. Thirdly, placing
hope in technological progress is exactly the wrong way to respond to climate
change, as that reinforces the same progress ideology that created the climate
crisis: we need to demolish the ideology, not reinscribe it.

Alber & Takvorian critique Roland Emmerich's _The Day After Tomorrow_. They say
that hope in this film comes from a white male heterosexual middle-class
saviour, whereas in reality the old order is the problem. The film is bad
because it is reactionary instead of revolutionary. I agree that this film gives
the wrong kind of hope, but I disagree with the diagnosis and am sceptical about
the prescribed treatment. What's wrong with the narrative is that we are saved
by the very systems which make environmental disaster possible, which escape
they judgement they deserve and we all need (see above). White male heterosexual
middle-class seems to me the wrong focus, the right focus is what the white male
heterosexual middle-class people do because of the political-economic systems
and ideologies they inhabit.

Caracciolo argued that climate apocalypse should be avoided because (a) the harm
is caused by humans and is in their power to prevent (b) the harm has already
begun and is not reserved for a future cataclysmic event (c) climate change is
not the end of the world. I think these are all very good points, and
successfully identifies what is wrong with a lot of climate apocalypse right
now. Notably, John's Apocalypse deals well with (b) and (c). With respect to
(a), I might point out that it is not in the gift of almost anyone, and perhaps
anyone at all, to control climate change, and therefore rhetoric which falsely
claims the reverse may be dishonest and/or alienating.

### @{regeneration}

I like this book a great deal, but I don't think it is relevant.

The Introduction and Epilogue were almost relevant. Painter described
conservation as a rearguard action, 'ugly', 'underfunded', 'political',
controversial, 'crisis management', caring for nature when the best options are
unavailable, triage, 'least-bad choices', and said that many conservationists
believe 'the natural world is doomed' and described conservation as 'fighting a
rising tide'. However, the example of Mar Lodge Estate shows that humans and
nature are more adaptable and resilient than you might expect. We can see the
results of conservation, it is working.

Terror is motivating ambition, he said in his Epilogue.

In his Epilogue, he went on to speculate about the future of lynx introductions
and what Mar Lodge Estate might become over the span of the Estate's 200-year
plan.

However, apart from light sprinklings of doom and gloom here and there, there
was very little that was apocalyptic about this book. It is very realistic and
historical-scientific rather than mythological or visionary. It strongly resists
moral dualism, going out of its way to blur moral binaries, and is more
interested in messy human lives, practical action and Realpolitik than pure
morality.

### @{revealed-wisdom}

A collection of nice but mostly irrelevant academic essays on apocalyptic. It
might be worth checking out Christopher Rowland's book output: he was evidently
influential.

Andrew Chester brought out the cosmic extent of threat in Revelation which I
hadn't fully appreciated. He observed that the visions in Revelation unwind
Creation, ending the separation between the heavens, plucking the stars from
their place, darkening the sun and moon, destroying the land, threatening a
complete end to creation. But Jesus shines like the sun and holds seven stars in
his hand, and in the New Jerusalem, God's permanent light abolishes the light of
the heavenly bodies. The old world was made chaos by evil, and the new world is
re-created out of the chaos made of the old. He raised a difficult concern: does
John's New Jerusalem ending appear like a _deus ex machina_? I wasn't convinced
by his own solution. This issue bedevils green rhetoric as well: placing hope in
a distant, improbable salvation over which we have little or no control, taking
away the urgency for action now and making us feel alienated from the world.

John Barton said that apocalypse encourages the ethics of setting-apart over the
ethics of fitting in (he used jargon words which I forgot). Apocalyptic ethics
is distinct from other Jewish ethics because it has a pessimistic view of human
power and human prospects, but promotes disinterested submission to God anyway.
I think this is similar to what I've seen described before as 'martyrdom
ethics.'

## 2026-04-27

### @{oxford-handbook-apocalyptic}

I finished skimming the chapters today after starting last Friday.

DiTommaso said there were three periods of modern apocalyptic fiction. Before
1945, there was a small number of novels and short stories about the decline of
civilization, including HG Wells, Isaac Asimov, and others. From 1945-1990s,
apocalyptic was dominated by the symbol of nuclear holocaust. From the 1990s,
apocalyptic has focused on other doomsday scenarios, and responds to the fall of
the Soviet Union, the War on Terror, the environmental crisis, and the new
medium of the Internet. Since 1945, apocalypse in fiction has been equated with
doomsday, and is therefore not really apocalyptic in DiTommaso's view.

I did have an idea today that environmental apocalypse today is hamstrung by the
hidden symbol of nuclear armageddon structuring the shape of the narrative.
Maybe there's something in this, and maybe I should read some nuclear
apocalypses, or nuclear political rhetoric?

Frykholm had an interesting discussion of American premillenial
dispensationalism. 'Premillenial' means Jesus comes back to inaugurate the
millenium, not to conclude it. Unlike the jeremiads of the Puritans,
contemporary dispensationalism relegates the realm of human action to merely
individual salvation, everything else is doomed. There is little emphasis on an
ultimate state of peace, and lots of emphasis on doom and destruction. It became
popular just as evangelicals became increasingly politically influential, and as
it did so, turned ever more to active symbols like believers fighting
Antichrist. It has been spread by mass media and sells very well. It has
motivated missionary movements, since in the dispensationalist scheme, Jesus
will return only after the Gospel has been preached over the whole Earth. It is
a very resilient tradition, and is unaffected by series of failed prophecies. It
seems to function well as a way to give meaning to world events.

### @{greenpeace-report}

The Greenpeace report went like this: the scientists report their knowledge that
human emissions will cause catastrophic global warming. If we don't change
course, disaster will befall us, perhaps the collapse of civilisation. But 'we'
can change course if governments reach international agreements to set and stick
to targets, among other measures. This is the only sensible possibility in the
current situation of crisis.

I noticed a few echoes of nuclear rhetoric. Nuclear energy got a chapter,
condemning nuclear energy as a failed 20th-century project not fit for the
future. On page 1, the editor said, 'Even nuclear-weapons laboratories host
conferences on the greenhouse effect these days.' Toronto 1990 declared the
greenhouse threat to be 'second only to nuclear war.' Queen Beatrix was quoted
saying in her 1988 Christmas address that 'The Earth is slowly dying, and the
inconceivable -- the end of life itself -- is actually becoming conceivable. We
human beings ourselves have become a threat to our planet.' The
end-of-civilization rhetoric in several places also echoed nuclear rhetoric.

I noticed that much of the exhortation was directed at nebulous 'we's and
'countries'. 'Of course, developed countries should pay for it.' Sometimes, this
stopped at scathing criticism of current practices, particularly the (excellent)
chapter on economics attacking the policies of the IMF and World Bank.
Sometimes, this came with concrete proposals for action, like the governments of
OECD countries giving free stuff to countries in the Global South to not chop
down rainforests or build renewable economies.

Policy proposals included governments implementing (unspecified) policies to
encourage alternatives to driving, banning highly emitting cars, governments in
developed countries funding rainforest reforestation in developing countries,
and other kinds of financial aid to developing countries funded by governments
in developing countries.

The Greenpeace response gave 7 proposals:

1. Take action now, don't wait until there is more scientific certainty.
2. 'The main routes to surviving the greenhouse threat' are energy efficiency,
   renewables instead of fossil fuels and nuclear, ban the production of CFCs,
   produce less greenhouse gases in the process of making food, stopping
   deforestation, and scaling up reforestation.
3. 'The world community' must consume no more than 12TW, distributed more
   equally across the world than the current 10TW.
4. 'Industrialized countries' should invest in energy efficiency and give free
   stuff to developing countries to enable them to 'leap-frog' the polluting
   route to industrialisation.
5. All energy should be produced by renewables ASAP.
6. Nuclear power should not be expanded or extended.
7. The first steps are to immediately cut CO2 emissions, draw up a strategy for
   phasing out fossil fuels in the early 21st century, make every effort to
   arrest deforestation and halt the production of CFCs and HFCs.
8. Climate action should be funded by cutting military expenditure.

The report featured lots of scientific language throughout: figures, numbers,
and references to scientific publications.

I found the report alienating. I don't think it successfully identified the
causes of global warming or the solutions. I don't think it generated hope or
appropriate action.

### @{apocalyptic-imagination}

Reviews suggest that this book was been very influential since it was first
published in 1984.

Big takeaways:

- John's Revelation innovatively identified Jesus with stock symbols from
  apocalyptic and messianic traditions, and the symbols fought back...
- Apocalyptic literature served diverse functions in diverse settings, John not
  written in response to crisis but rather ideological conflict
- Apocalyptic literature should be appreciated for multivocal, indeterminate use
  of traditional mythological symbols
- Apocalyptic literature generally serves to exhort and/or console by use of an
  eschatological revelation mediated by an otherworldly being

Apocalyptic literature may not all have a shared Sitz im Leben: coventicle and
distress have been proposed, but the evidence is shaky. The notion that
apocalyptic is written in response to crisis is shaky, too. Apocalypses have
diverse goals in response to diverse problems. What they have in common is they
respond to their diverse problems with a vision of another world, featuring
judgement and eschatology. It's generally true that apocalyptic served to exhort
and console, though this is very vague.

John's Revelation was probably written to address an ideological conflict with
Rome rather than a crisis of persecution.

John's Revelation draws on apocalyptic precedents for these features:

- Exhortation to martyrdom ethic (Dan)
- Discourages militant action while envisioning final judgement (4 Ezra)
- Affirms eschatological destruction of the wicked (4 Ezra)

But what's weird is Jesus. Jesus accepts worship. Dan's Ancient of Days and Son
of Man fused together in chp 1. Lion = lamb: fusion of messianic and sacrificial
imagery. Reinterpretation of messianic tradition in light of Jesus' death.
'Sword of his mouth' identifies Jesus who bore no sword with this standard
messianic image, from Isa 11.

In conclusion, John bends the apocalyptic genre to present Jesus as the Messiah.
Meanwhile, the apocalyptic form bends John to present Jesus as a warrior and
judge, in opposition to Jesus' irenic ethics. Hence the moral controversy over
Revelation.

This reading really helped me with the violence in Revelation. Perhaps part of
the function of the violence in Revelation is to subversively identify Jesus
with ancient Jewish hopes. Though am I being tempted to wash over the violence
in the text?

Collins also had a great discussion of dispensationalism vs ancient apocalyptic.
He pointed out that dispensationalism swaps angst and martyr ethics for smug
certainty of election, and swaps allusive mythological symbols for allegorical
code. However, he admits that they share moral dualism, a sense of cosmic
crisis, hope for divine intervention, and even 'decoding' has a long history.
This motivates the view, which many scholars take, that apocalyptic is
irredeemable.

Lorenzo DiTommaso says it is an 'unhealthy worldview', immature, 'hostile to
life on Earth.' I'd like to hear more about his views. David Frankfurter says it
is a morally unacceptable apology for brutal violence.

Collins thinks it is better to acknowledge both the violence and the
justice/hope sides of the texts rather than try to deny the violence or ignore
the justice/hope. He points out that apocalyptic symbols are not just used by
dispensationalists, but also by novelists like Cormack McCarthy.

Then there's some random handy observations on apocalyptic literature I picked
up.

He said that apocalyptic literature, apocalyptic social movements and
ideologies, and apocalyptic eschatology, should all be distinguished, and never
smudged together with a generic noun, 'apocalyptic'.

He shed light on why scholars occasionally dispute the boundaries or existence
of the genre, apocalypse. The word 'apocalypse' was first used to denote a genre
from the late 1st century, after most of the core of the supposed genre was
written. Semeia 14 set out to test whether 'apocalypse' was a real genre before
that, and concluded, yes, the usual works do share features which distinguish it
from other literature. Particularly revelation, mediated by an otherworldly
authority, disclosing a transcendent reality, of eschatological salvation and/or
another world. Other scholarly definitions are available.

Collins noted two major types of apocalypse: historical vs cosmic journeys. Both
interwoven in the Enochic literature. Striking lack of historical concern in
Revelation.

Collins notes that RH Charles in the age of Wellhausen, and HH Rowley and RS
Russell in the mid-20C, set the tone before. They had a tendency to reduce
mythological language to allegory for historical or theological propositional
assertions, and were intolerant of what they saw as incoherence, and posited
source relationships to 'explain' such features, as if they were necessarily
written by neat-minded modern scholars like them. Nowadays, scholars believe
that apocalypses were probably written like that originally, because their
authors had different standards/priorities. Paul Ricoeur reckoned that symbols
have multivocal, indeterminate meaning. Gunkel debunked textual 'seams' in
apocalypses, encouraged appreciation of symbolic, traditional mythological
language.

Scholars spent much of the 20th century arguing over whether apocalypse came
from prophecy or Persia, or even wisdom. Now scholars recognise it was
influenced by all of those, and Hellenistic literature, but none of them can
fully explain apocalypse independently. (The project to show where apocalypse
came from often obscured hidden agendas to discredit apocalypse.)

Apocalypse has suffered from scholarly prejudice, a morally inferior kind of
literature, a corruption of late prophecy, distrust of millenarian movements.

## 2026-04-24

### @{oxford-handbook-apocalyptic}

A useful reference, worth coming back to if I want to investigate particular
topics in recent-ish biblical scholarship on apocalyptic.

Friesen gave a helpful overview of recent Revelation scholarship. Between 1970
and 1990, biblical scholarships came to agree that Revelation was written in the
later part of Domitian's reign; that it was primarily written to address
internal conflict, not external persecution; and that John replicates imperial
ideology in some way, although scholars disagreed whether he replicates in order
to reinscribe (Carey, Moore, Pipin) or to subvert (Fiorenza, Thompson, et alia).
Revelation was increasingly interpreted through the concept 'empire' from 1990.
Esler argued that recent Revelation scholarship has suffered from a myopic focus
on empire, which has obscured many apocalypses' real concerns, which are often
ethnic, in his view.

Esler argued that John's rhetoric around magic functions to strengthen the
distinct community identity of his audience, building on Elliot 1984, who argued
that he responded to contemporary fears of _pharmakeia_ by accusing Rome of
sorcery and showing that God had the best magic.

Carey observed that John, like other apocalypticists, uses the form (direct
divine revelation) to generate authority, but like other apocalypticists, he
also generates authority by admitting his personal weakness and identifying with
his audience.

Carey also observed that the Lion of Judah is announced, then appears as a Lamb,
implying that the Lamb conquers not by devouring his enemies but by his
suffering witness.

### @{goldstein-2024}

Goldstein argues that right-wing people have labelled the climate movement
'apocalyptic' in order to try and discredit it. He says it is ironic that the
right wingers are accusing the climate movement of being religious when it is
them that are denying the science. He concludes that climate science (which he
conflates with the climate movement, because the climate movement is based on
climate science) does have some aspects of biblical apocalypticism, but not
others, and it should therefore be happy to adopt a 'secularised' notion of
apocalypse.

The features climate science shares with biblical apocalyptic are revealing the
future, catastrophe and moral dualism. This is fine and should not change: these
are simply the scientific facts. The differences are as follows: there is
nothing 'otherworldly' or 'metaphysical' about climate science, there is no hope
placed in a messianic saviour but rather in collective action, and there is no
guarantee of a redemptive afterwards or of judgement or of salvation.

I found his argument very weak and distressingly myopic. His account of the
similarities and differences between 'climate science' and apocalyptic neatly
summarised, I think, just the kind of climate apocalyptic that is justly
criticised for a variety of reasons, and fails to recognise the need for climate
communication, even that which is 'scientific', to be fictionalised, and the
need -- as many people see it -- for an ultimate hope.

### @{fagan-2017}

Horribly unreadable, in the way I associate with 'critical theory.' A couple of
points stuck out to me. She was talking about ecological apocalypse combined
with ethical motivation, like 'future generations will never forgive us if we
don't act now!'. She criticised this, apparently mainly because of the 'we'. The
'we' ignores the fact that individuals share responsibility for climate change
with corporations and the capitalist system. Also, putting the adverse effects
of climate change in the future ignores the adverse effects that are already
happening.

### @{kowalewski-environmental-apocalypse}

A collection of essays, four were particularly interesting. There was a strong
thread of avoiding utopianism on the one hand, and catastrophism on the other. I
think John's Apocalypse can fit nicely in the middle ground.

Catastrophe/Anthropocene discourse, whatever seeks to say 'we have all done this
and we must change our ways now or else,' reinforces existing institutions
instead of seeking to reform them and obscures the unequal politics behind
climate change (think 'Oligarchocene', 'Capitalocene'). Better ways acknowledge
the unequal blame and impacts, target the system for reform. I think John's
Apocalypse does this really well.

Crisis optimism or progress utopianism is no good either. No one is coming to
save the day, and in fact, the disaster is already well underway, we cannot
avert it, and no redemption is possible. I think John's Apocalypse deals well
with these issues.

Focusing on catastrophe also distracts from the catastrophic features of
business as usual. Reimagine the imperialist/capitalist system as in a constant
state of 'slow catastrophe'. Avoids both catastrophic and utopian thinking. John
does this, too.

Fernandez criticised (neo-)catastrophism, the idea that Earth's history is
punctuated by instantaneous disasters, and we may be approaching another one if
we don't change course. We can only avoid it or atone for it afterwards. This
discourse obscures the harm that is already happening and will continue to
happen, and thus obscures the need for adaptation. It also reinforces existing
institutions rather than seeking to reform them.

Kowalewski said that a lot of eco-eschatology posits a single, linear time, This
discourse obscures ends of worlds which colonised people have already
experienced, and obscures the imperialism and inequal causes and impacts of
climate change. Cyclic time has issues, too. Instead we should think of time as
spiralling.

Catlin said we struggle to imagine climate catastrophe as real, literature which
does so gets labelled 'science fiction'. (In fact, sci-fi uses the future as a
literary convention to reveal distortions of the present.) Two present solutions
don't solve this problem. On the one hand is crisis optimism: the crisis is
terrible, but also an opportunity for something good to happen; the problem is
it doesn't fit the facts: climate change is too bad, not redemptive. Traditional
apocalypse, which he associates with 'Anthropocene' discourse (prefer
'Oligarchocene' or 'Capitalocene') burdens people with universalised guilt, but
is fatalistic, paralyses people, and obscures the politics of climate change. In
the middle is 'slow catastrophe', the idea that the catastrophe is not the
events which punctuate it as particularly unusual, but the normal background.
The system, capitalism, is the problem. The key problems Catlin raises are
these: 'Anthropocene' discourse obscuring the political realities, fatalism,
unrealistic redemptive utopianism. (I think good apocalypticism can avoid all
these things!)

Skrimshire: afterlife thinking grounds our value of the present in its future
fulfilment. But apocalyptic thinking severs this link: the present is about to
be destroyed, and we don't know when or how! Apocalypse demolishes our world,
our time, and utopia comes down from an external time/place. The rhetorical
function of this is to heighten our moral imperatives for living in the present,
and this is evident in Revelation, Paul, Daniel, Gospels. We're no longer tied
down by distracting temporary things, we're cutting right back to what really
matters.

### @{apocalyptic-patterns}

Early Christians balanced a lot of apocalyptic tensions, including now vs not
yet. Origen, and then Augustine (City of God), wrote against literal
interpretations of Revelation, and Augustine set the tone for Bede, Anselm,
Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas. Joachim of
Fiore popularised a literal interpretation in the thirteenth century, and though
he was condemned by the authorities, he had a big influence on later Hussites,
Lutherans, and Anabaptists, who identified the Antichrist with the Pope (and
various other people). In the Enlightenment, there was a swing from new world by
revelation to new world by revolution: 1789, 1848, Communist Manifesto. Secular
millenialism? Shelley's _The Last Man_ started a 19th-century trend for
end-of-humanity novels, HG Wells can be read in that tradition. Since Barth,
theology has re-focused on eschatology, but de-emphasised the literal facts of
the end-times, though such speculation is alive in well in popular preaching and
fiction.

Devonport has four models of apocalyptic imagination, ways of relating ultimate
reality (UR) and primordial time (PR) to profane time (T). One is the UR=PR
transcends and is kneaded into T. One is that T is cyclically spinning off into
UR, each time is an opportunity to jump off the train. Another is that T is an
irreversible march from PR to UR, which both transcend T and are placed as
historical endpoints within it, thus giving T meaning and structure. Another is
the same as the third but UR is seen as a return to PR, rather than going beyond
it.

Much of this book seemed concerned with metaphysical speculation, which is fine,
but a step removed from my concern with rhetorical strategy. I'd have to spend
at least half a day getting more value out of this book, probably a whole day.
If I did, I'd want to ask, how do the metaphysical speculations implied by the
20th-century novels studied in this book give the audience hope in the face of
adversity? But I think the question is a bit sideways to what this book is
trying to do, perhaps what novels in general are trying to do.

I was struck though by Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel, _The Road_, in which a
father and son struggle to survive in a post-nuclear desert, searching for other
good people and signs of life in an environment of death. That struck me as
related to my concerns with apocalyptic, as struggling on with the right values
even in an environment hostile to the good.

He had an idea about the hereafter as something present now beneath the surface,
ready to burst forth. I think this is a great idea, perhaps more obvious in
Pauline apocalypse than Revelation. However, could we say that the effect of
mythic language as described by @{thompson-revelation}, to nest the present
context in a larger context, does this? Is the New Jerusalem a reality
underlying the present one, now, waiting to burst forth?

### @{no-one-is-too-small}

Major themes:

- It's black and white. Survival or death. Tipping point or no tipping point.
  People know this but somehow don't act on it: they say it is a big issue but
  do nothing about it. Hypocrisy.
- The people in power have let us down. They should be behaving like grown ups,
  but they aren't, so children have to hold them to account. It's not right that
  children have to speak truth and hold power to account, but some one has to do
  it.
- Children striking is weird, but necessary; this proves how weird the times are
- We need radical change right now
- This is not a political opinion, it's a scientific fact
- People in power need to start listening to the scientists

## 2026-04-23

### @{xr-not-a-drill}

A collection of very short essays. Biggest takeaway: false hope is thinking
everything will turn out alright, real hope means persevering with love in the
knowledge that things will not turn out alright, at least for a while. Aragorn
at the Black Gate. Leaves me with a question: does true hope require us to have
faith that things will turn out alright _eventually_, even if on the other side
of the catastrophe?

I was mostly struck by the hopefulness. @{kvandal-2025} had led me to expect XR
folk to have no hope for change, but I never found that. Everyone has hope that
things can change. Sam Knights, an editor an prominent XR organiser who opened
with the first essay, said: we did our homework, we organised a civil
disobedience campaign, we got an audience with politicians, we got Parliament to
declare a climate crisis. We have demands for politicians. We think if we keep
fighting we can win. Many contributors, especially in the second half about
practical action, emphasised the need for joy at protests: bring cake, give
police flowers, make sure it's a place that young, old and vulnerable people are
happy to be, serve rice and dal to fellow rebels, play music and dance.

Jim Bendell's essay perhaps shows what kind of 'hopelessness' @{kvandal-2025}
was referring to. He used to think we could prevent catastrophe, but now
predicts social breakdown in most countries by 2030, and says he may not grow
old. He compares the realisation to Dostoevsky's false execution, saying he got
an intensified experience of the present. He thinks that once we drop false
hopes, we can live in the present with integrity. ('False hope' refers to belief
that we can avoid catastrophe.) We should prepare for the inevitable disaster
that's headed our way. We should not sacrifice our values to do whatever it
takes to avoid the disaster, because our values are worth keeping and the
disaster is inevitable anyway. Despair is inevitable, but love is the way
through despair.

I don't think this is a hopeless narrative. There are things worth keeping,
which we can keep: love, integrity, experiencing the present. The 'false hope'
is the belief that things will be alright, which in my view is a shallow kind of
hope right from the start: real hope means perseverance in the face of
difficulty, and that's just what Jim advocates for. Seeing that things are in
fact pretty dreadful, and then resolving to live by what is right anyway, seems
strikingly similar to the rhetoric of John's Apocalypse. I also thought of
Aragorn's speech at the Black Gate, after he had seen Frodo's mail shirt and
been convincingly lied to that Frodo had been captured. It is a stark contrast
to the kind of 'hope' inspired by some folk who think we can stop the disaster.
It does also express a lack of faith in the establishment. (Like John…?)

Dougald Hine had a rather different kind of hope, a helpful contrast. He says,
to survive, the impossible must happen, but we can have hope, because we can see
signs that we live in times where the impossible happens (Brexit, Trump,
Corbyn). He also criticised the 'sustainability' discourse behind 'plant 8
billion trees and then we can carry on as normal', and says that 'carry on as
normal' is not desirable in 21st-century politics. Tweaking the market, fuel
duty, not adequate. He complained about the 'disenchantment of politics by
economics.' His hope is that we can avert disaster by overturning the political
system. This doesn't have the resigned pessimism to resilience move of Jim, and
instead it promotes revolution to get change to avoid the catastrophe. It
strikes me that Jim is much more apocalyptic than Dougald for this reason.

The Apocalypse came up twice. Once, Ted Silverberg, who survived a forest fire
in California, said of the experience 'it feels like the Apocalypse; black,
burned and decimated … a devastating emptiness … like a hydrogen bomb … the end
of the world.' Rowan Williams in his Afterword said that this book is not an
apocalypse (or a jeremiad) because it expresses conviction that things can
change. Part of me thinks, has he read the Apocalypse? But I suppose one could
argue that the rhetoric of the Apocalypse is to get people to endure inevitable
suffering rather than work to avert suffering, maybe that's his point. (But
really, has he read Jeremiah?)

Jay Griffiths had some striking mythical language describing a protest: 'Ancient
values are overtly resurrected in this Easter rebellion in London: the values of
chivalry and honour, faith in life and being service to Our Lady, Notre Dame,
Mother Earth, the mother on whom everything else depends.' The police loved
looking after us in our cells and said 'God bless' to us on the way out.
Exemplifies how mythical language nests a little context into a bigger context.
Not entirely intended to be read as 'fictional' I think, with the reference to
'the mother on whom everything else depends.'

I was struck by how Rowan Williams concluded. In his essay, he emphasised that
'it might just work', or 'it might not'. Either way, we need to restore an
intelligent relationship with our world.' Accept the diseased imagination of the
culture we have created and the death count begins now. Anger, love andjoy may
be odd bedfellows, but these are the seeds of a future that may offer life --
not success, but life.

### @{xr-declaration}

'This is our darkest hour'. '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.' Doing nothing is madness. Since the Government has failed to protect
us from this threat, democracy and the social contract are not in effect and it
is our right and 'sacred duty' to rebel against the Government. We demand that
we 'apply informed solutions' and convene a National Assembly. We rebel
peacefully.

The Declaration has hope in it: there is hope that by rebelling against the
Government, instituting true democracy, and listening to the scientists, we can
avert catastrophe. It is rousing rhetoric. I felt roused. It depends on hope
that we can avert catastrophe, though, but at the same time it emphasises what a
slim hope that is, which also leaves me feeling stressed and depressed.

### @{inconvenient-truth}

Big idea: global warming is happening, you can do something about it, reduce
your own emissions and get involved in politics. International agreements can
save the day and you can make a difference. It made me feel inspired to do
something, it was hopeful. However, I look on his faith in politics with
nostalgic longing, I don't feel I have that faith in UK politics now.

A few things struck me especially:

- Science-saviour narrative. Roger Revelle. Galileos reporting what they see,
  inconvenient truths, against the Bellarmine fossil fuel companies. We must
  listen to the warnings of the scientists. Fossil fuel lobby defiles the
  prophetic office of the scientists.
- Use of horror. Hurricane Katrina prominent. Destruction of beautiful
  environments, polar bears drowning. Allusions to 9/11. 'Nature hike through
  the Book of Revelations.'
- Preciousness: Earthshot, Pale Blue Dot, reminiscences of rural idyll, as a boy
  lots of contact with nature, no notion of the difference between work and play
- Faith in politics, and particularly international agreements, we can do
  something about it! (I find it difficult to get on board with this faith now,
  as much as I would love to)

Al Gore speaks over the soundtrack almost the whole time. The film featured a
few different threads woven together:

- Al Gore reminiscing about growing up in a rural idyll and going back to visit
- Al Gore presenting his global warming presentation
- Al Gore travelling the world on a mission to convince people to do something
  about global warming
- Al Gore remembering his early experiences with Roger Revelle

Lots of what Al Gore was saying was illustrated with video montages. There were
also isolated snippets relating the story to his 2000 election campaign and the
time his 6-year-old son was hit by a car and nearly died.

Notable features of the presentation:

- Pictures of Earth, opening with Earthshot and concluding with Voyager 1's Pale
  Blue Dot
- We used to assume the continents were too big to move, likewise, we used to
  assume the climate was too big to move, but we were wrong
- Global warming is already shrinking Lake Chad, melting huge glaciers, chomping
  chunks out of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets
- CO2 and temperature changes are way out of order with natural changes in human
  history and the last 650,000 years, could be in for unimaginable change in
  what Earth looks like, comparison with Ice Ages
- Temperatures clearly increasing, new records always being set. Results:
  heatwaves killing thousands, hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, Katrina!
- There were warnings before Katrina, now we must listen to the warnings of the
  scientists
- Europe had a year of catastrophes 'like a nature hike through the Book of
  Revelations'
- Ice getting thinner (had to sail on a nuclear sub to get their data)
- Greenland ice sheet melting could stop Gulf Stream, plunge Europe into Ice
  Age, last time took as little as 10 years and lasted for 1000 years
- Nature's calendar changes
- Sea level rise threatens 10s of millions, World Trade Center memorial
  underwater, terrorism not our only threat
- US contributes the most, not ratified Kyoto, though states and cities have

I thought I could just tell the story to Congress and they would be startled
into doing something. I had faith in the political process. But Congress wasn't
startled. (Later in the film, he clearly expresses faith in politics and
encourages people to get involved in politics.)

Tobacco: we kept growing tobacco after link to lung cancer was clear. Dad grew
tobacco all his life until mum died of lung cancer. Sometimes we hit a day of
reckoning and wish we'd connected the dots quicker. Tobacco funded science
denial, likewise fossil fuel lobby funds science denial, commits scientific
fraud, persecutes scientists willing to do their duty to report what they see,
their inconvenient truths. White House staffer removed stuff from a memo, fired,
next day got a job at Exxon.

So far, I see no signs we're about to change. Politicians don't do anything
because their constituents don't want them to. That's why I'm on the campaign
trail. Enough minds may change to cross a tipping point. 'City by city, person
by person, family by family.'

Some skip from denial to despair, don't! We have everything we need to do
something about it! End-use efficiency, renewables, CCS, etc. All we need is
political will. 'In America, political will is a renewable resource.' We made
massive political successes: ending slavery, women's suffrage, fighting fascism,
non-violence, Mandela, ending the nuclear arms race, ending Communism, closing
the ozone hole. We can do it again. 'It is our time to rise again to fix our
future.'

I had the privilege to be shown the future as a young man. Revell went and
measured CO2, was startled by what he found, joined the dots, showed it to us
young students. 'I had the privilege to be shown it as a young man. It's almost
as if a window was opened through which the future was very clearly visible. See
that? he says, see that? That's the future in which you're going to live your
life.'

Future generations will ask why their parents didn't wake up. 'We need to hear
that question from them now.'

The film concluded with a reel of ways people can take action interspersed
amongst the credits: reduce your personal emissions, recycle, vote, run for
office, plant trees, speak up, support international agreements, 'if you believe
in prayer, pray that people will find the strength to change. When you pray,
move your feet' and get people to watch this movie. Learn about the issues and
then do something about it.

## 2026-04-22

### @{ultimate-things}

Different Jewish and Christian apocalypses have different rhetorical strategies
and goals.

11 key features of apocalypses:

1. Alternative (spatial, temporal) worlds
2. Visions/auditions (often dreams)
3. Heavenly intermediaries (often angels, tour guides)
4. Symbolism (often conventional)
5. Pseudonymity (Rev exceptional)
6. Cosmic catastrophe followed by ultimate deliverance
7. Moral dualism (alongside call to repentance)
8. Determinism (the future is set by God)
9. Judgement and the afterlife
10. Ex eventu prophecy
11. Cosmic speculation (moon, stars, calendar)

John's rhetorical goal is to get his audience to resist and stop participating
in a corrupt society in order to subvert it. Neither waiting for God to fix
everything, nor abandoning the world completely. Rev is much more political,
anti-imperial, than the Shepherd of Hermas or the Apocalypse of Peter (which
competed with Rev for canonisation), while the latter emphasise individual
morality and perseverance.

Violence is a big issue for today's interpreters, though one should note that
violence is led by the Beast and the Whore; violence against them and their
followers is portrayed as the natural backlash or righteous judgement for their
wickedness; and the saints never commit violence.

Not much here about how John achieves his rhetorical goals, so of limited use.

### @{silent-spring}

Her big idea: don't trust the USDA or the chemical companies, they are at best
negligent and at worst lying. Insecticides and herbicides are poison. It is
madness to try and control 'pests' by pouring poison over everything.

Her brief first chapter is the most dramatic. She tells a fictionalised story of
a town in the rural US where a grim spectre passes over, killing fish, birds,
livestock, and then humans. They have poisoned themselves: some white dust still
lingers on the gable ends.

She hammers home the point that so-called 'pesticides' are in fact poison. They
were developed in WW2 for use as chemical weapons to be used directly against
humans; when alkyls were first discovered, they were kept secret by the Nazi
government, recognising its potential application as a chemical weapon, and it
is now sprayed in fields. She tells dramatic stories of poisonings of livestock,
wild fish, birds, and humans. One story of a child who went out to play in a
barn his father had just sprayed with alkyls, and ended up killed by poisoning.
This theme runs through just about every chapter, a constant stream of
horrifying stories of poisonings of humans and other creatures. Parathion kills
hundreds yearly around the world, poisoning victims are dangerous to the
physicians who treat them and the laundresses who wash their clothes.

The chemical threat is as serious as the nuclear threat. The first chemical
named is not a pesticide, but Strontium 90. Chemicals cause cancer, like
radiation. (Chps 2, 14)

There is a constant stream of new chemicals, far outstripping the capacity of
nature to adapt to them or of biologists to understand them. (Chp 2)

It is the first time in history that life is actively shaping its environment
rather than adapting to its environment. (Chp 2)

It is an escalating arms-race against insects who quickly develop resistance
(Chps 2, 15).

Chemical companies and the USDA lie to us or are negligently ignorant. This is
because of their profit motive and because they pay for so much of the science.
They label poisons as 'safe' when they are in fact poisonous. They call poison
'insecticide' and 'herbicide' and 'pesticide' to obscure how dangerous it is to
diverse kinds of life, including humans, not just insects, herbs, and pets. They
exaggerate the threats, ignore the alternative solutions, exaggerate the
effectiveness of their chemicals and deny the harms. They don't consult with
people or even inform them, who end up poisoned without their consent. Brave
individuals like Joseph Sweeney of Toledo, Ohio, have to fight the epistemic
weight of respectable scientific institutions like universities, the USDA and
the chemical companies. Some states such as Alabama and Florida are beginning to
see through the deception. (Chps 2, 3, 8, 10, 15)

There are better ways of pest control: removing infected elm trees promptly,
flooding mosquito populations with sterile males, poisoning individual fire ant
mounds locally rather than spraying whole countrysides. European foresters plant
ant mounds and use birdboxes to encourage woodpeckers, encourage a diverse range
of natural controls in balance. Chemicals destroy natural controls and thus make
the problems worse. (Chps 8, 10, 15, 16)

The Afterword was very interesting. In the view of Linda Lear, the effect of
Silent Spring was to not only bring about regulation, but end an era of
unquestioning trust in government agencies and chemical companies. She exposed
that they hadn't done their homework or had lied. In a Cold War context,
questioning the techno-scientific-industrial authorities could be perceived as
traitorous. Chemical companies fought hard against her, sued the publishers to
try and prevent it being published, then spent $¼ million on an aggressive
publicity campaign against her. She was attacked for being 'emotional', an
'hysterical woman,' her acclaimed novels cited as evidence that she couldn't be
a real scientist, her literary style as evidence that she wasn't writing real
science, real science is technical jargon buried in lab reports which can only
be understood by specialists, if it's comprehensible to the public it must be
unscientific. She had no PhD, no institution, no network of scientific
colleagues to back her up, but still, the smear campaign failed. In a speech to
the Women's National Press Club, she said that science was being compromised 'to
serve the gods of profit and production.'

Her big move is from lies to truth. From the way things aren't to the way things
are. I didn't feel there was much mythical language going on. There is shock
horror motivating action, though, including horrible futures that are starting
now. It still feels like it places hope in the system somewhere: the solution is
government regulation. Its effectiveness gives one pause for thought: perhaps
horror can be an effective motivator for political action.

There's a link between her battle against the chemical lobby and the idea of
apocalyptic literature as defending a cognitive minority
(@{thompson-revelation}). It's not obvious that she achieves that goal by
apocalyptic means, but maybe there is something here: her authority is not based
on institutions or standard instruments of verification, but based on empirical
evidence. Is that like what John of Patmos does?

## 2026-04-21

### @{thompson-revelation}

I was particularly struck by three big ideas, all of which I could understand a
great deal better:

- Revelation nests local contexts inside bigger contexts, finally the widest
  possible context: cosmos. This is the role of mythological language. Although
  the beast and Rome e.g. are connected by mythological language, the imagery
  cannot be reduced to mere correspondence; Asian social life is found in the
  relationship between images within, not outside, the world of the vision.
- John's vision is not characterised by deep metaphysical dualism, conflict or
  crisis, but rather 'moves from unbroken wholeness to unbroken wholeness.'
- There is no evidence for a crisis facing John's audience imposed on Christians
  from without, except perhaps a cognitive crisis induced because they are a
  'cognitive minority,' that is, a community centred around 'deviant knowledge.'
  Rather than responding to an obvious crisis, John interprets a situation which
  is only a crisis from his point of view. The conflict he sees is
  intra-Christian, not Christian-Roman.

Other ideas:

- Traditionally, scholars assumed that Revelation addressed a current crisis,
  viz Domitianic persecution. But there is no evidence for a Domitianic
  persecution. Schmidtals: apocalyptic imagination completely unrelated to
  external crisis. Compromise: apocalypse reacts to a perceived crisis only
  visible as a crisis from the apocalyptic point of view.
- Apocalypses expand our vision of the world to include transcendent realities,
  expanding in both temporal and spatial dimensions
- John uses forms from the apocalyptic genre, viz, crisis, exhortations to
  remain faithful, comfort, hope, even though there is no apparent crisis, no
  need for faith/comfort/hope, except from his apocalyptic point of view
- Revealed knowledge is a challenge to public knowledge, embedded in temples,
  courts, priests, judges, governors, libraries, architecture, etc, thus
  controlled by the empire or 'cognitive majority'
- Traditionally, readers of all kinds have assumed that the end-times are the
  central concern of apocalyptic literature, but Thompson centres it on the
  concept of 'revealed literature', meeting the challenge from the cognitive
  majority

### @{kvandal-2025}

Big idea: pessimistic climate activists who believe in unavoidable mass
extinction, use a Green Apocalypse narrative to simulate the adverse potential
reality of human extinction, and as a result, carry out symbolic, ritualistic
acts to restore a virtual sense of agency in place of the real agency they
believe they have lost.

The authors believe there is a cross-cultural end-time narrative, though this
isn't really important. What matters is the particular instance of the Green
Apocalypse: the world is imminently coming to an end because of climate change,
and there's nothing anyone can do. The evil fossil fuel lobby is the cause of
it. We may be able to 'save' ourselves, if only in a moral sense, if we act now.

Environmentalists are on an optimism-pessimism spectrum. The optimists believe
we can do something about it, and have hope that existing institutions:
governments, COPs, the UN, science, technology, can avert the worst catastrophe
if we act now. Pessimists sometimes explicitly abjure hope: perhaps hope is
perceived as a sign that you're still buying the optimist's progress narrative.
Pessimists like XR, Greta Thunberg express feelings of betrayal with respect to
the establishment.

The Green Apocalypse does not inspire hope, it inspires horror, fear etc.

Narratives may evoke horror, fear, in order to simulate situations you can't
practice for real. Human extinction an extreme example of this.

When people feel they have no real agency, they may use ritual to give them a
feeling of virtual agency. This may be what pessimistic climate activists are up
to when they engage in activism, sail across the Atlantic in a zero-carbon
sailing vessel to COP19, etc.

Their argument feels like it stops short to me. They seem to portray their
subjects as if they're trying to deceive themselves into feeling OK when their
beliefs only give them rational reasons to despair. If this is true, it is
deplorable, it is a condemnation of these people, it describes them as
irrational, deliberately dishonest.

It is striking that some people think that action begins when hope dies. This
goes against my assumptions.

Their Green Apocalypse seems to be just the target of the criticisms raised by
@{flannery-2024}. I felt they should have addressed the dangers of such
narratives raised in that article, but they didn't.

### @{flannery-2024}

Flannery offers five big reasons why 'climate apocalypse' is unhelpful and
should be avoided.

1. 'Apocalypse' is reduced in many folks' imaginations to 'end of the world',
   missing out the world-creating aspects of traditional apocalyptic, inspiring
   despair and thus leading to inaction.
2. (For many evangelical Christians) if climate change is identified with the
   end times, that encourages people to welcome climate change instead of fight
   it.
3. If climate change is the end times, human action to avert it is irrelevant,
   or given over to a scientific/technological/industrial saviour.
4. Apocalypses punish the wicked and vindicate the righteous. When climate
   apocalypses are told in e.g. the US, this suggests that the US is a victim,
   not an instigator, of climate change, which is perverse.
5. Climate apocalypse obscures the fact that human beings are responsible for
   climate change.

Before that, he makes a few big points:

- Industrial CO2 is causing major climate change, causing unprecedented
  existential threats to human civilization and wellbeing. The scientists tell
  us that we must cut emissions sharply immediately to avoid the worst effects
  and setting off tipping points. Our leading prospect for change, international
  collective action by nations, is unlikely to deliver the necessary change in
  time.
- Journalists and campaigners are increasingly using 'climate apocalypse'.
- Audiences' intentions, moods, and actions are guided by millenia of social
  memory, which embed associations between 'apocalypse' and a web of meanings,
  even unconsciously.

I think Flannery exposes some real and serious dangers with climate apocalyptic.
However, he under-explores positive possibilities: the world-creating aspects of
traditional apocalyptic, unconsciously embedded in social memories even by those
who think 'apocalypse' = 'end of the world.'

It would be worth responding to all these criticisms of climate apocalypse,
especially points 2, 3, 4, and 5. I have inklings how this might be done, to the
end that some climate apocalyptic is bad, but some avoids these problems.

## 2026-04-17

### @{revelation-vision-of-a-just-world}

Big idea: Revelation can be used today from a hegemonic point of view to justify
hatred and revenge. It should not be so used. Revelation should be read from a
marginal point of view to invoke commitment and resistance.

Fiorenza emphasises that readers should not attempt to recover the
scientifically objective 'first meaning' of Revelation, because Revelation is a
work of rhetoric, which means that its meaning is partly determined by its
audience. We have a responsibility to interpret it in ways which do good things.

She reckons John is writing from a marginal point of view. He vilifies the rich
churches like at Laodicaea, and praises the poor and oppressed ones like Smyrna
and Philadelphia.

John is writing against other Christian prophets, one of whom he gives the
slanderous name 'Jezebel'. They seem to be arguing for a reasonable compromise
with the imperial cult. In contrast, John is appealing to his readers to keep
well away from the imperial cult. His visions depict Rome as a mythical beast in
opposition to God and an agent of Satan, and promise that those who resist will
enjoy God's eschaton in New Jerusalem.

Fiorenza thinks that interpreting the visions of Revelation allegorically or
typologically as representing past, present or future historical events is a bad
plan. But she also thinks it is a bad plan to spiritualise the visions,
understanding them as merely describing the theological truth of God's justice
etc, as this kills off the critique of injustice and hope for a better world,
and scrubs out the complex inter-relationships between symbols in the visions.

I sense her view is something like this. In order to portray Rome for the way it
really is, John describes Rome in a way it literally isn't. Rome is the harlot,
the beast, the servant of Satan. Kings, merchants, and sailors will mourn over
her. She will be cast into an everlasting lake of fire, and because of her all
human beings will be killed. Those who resist Rome will rule in God's empire,
not just a bigger Rome but an upside-down one as well, where there are no
oppressive, life-destroying forces. None of these things are literally true, but
they can't and shouldn't be reduced to an underlying allegorical, typological or
theological truth, either. The vision, preserved in its imaginative wholeness,
enjoins us to re-see Rome for what it really is. This reconfigures the way we
approach moral decisions, like whether to eat food sacrificed to idols or to
honour an image of the emperor.

In particular, John seems to imagine Rome as a pretender God. It has usurped his
place in the world, demanded obeisance and seized power with force which rightly
belonging to God alone. When Christians compromise with the imperial cult, they
declare their submission to Rome's fake self-deity, and thus abandon their
commitment to the one God, the one source of life, the one hope of peace and
justice. In his view, even when it is disruptive, Christians must resist the
symbolic universe of the Roman imperial cult which sets up imperial power as a
fake God, and worship the true God instead.

Hope? She emphasises the marginal perspective from which John writes, and how he
gives mythological encouragement, that those who pay now because of the
oppressive powers of the world have their reward in heaven. The battle against
Satan is already going on, and the martyrs have staked their lives on the
winning side.

## 2026-04-16

### @{climate-history-modern-world-v2}

The big idea: the climate has not been stable in human history, it has been
erratic, and this has had a big impact on human history. It is likely to
continue having a big impact on us, and so we should strive to understand
climate much better, so we can forecast how it will change in the future and act
rationally to prepare for it.

I found it utterly fascinating. Somehow it took the edge out of climate
apocalypse, knowing that humans have lived with a constantly changing climate
since forever. The climate change we face now seems less of the utterly unique –
apocalyptic? – challenge it is typically portrayed, and more like just one more
of humanity's endless train of difficulties. We've done it before, we can do it
again...? However, I do wonder if the climate forecasting has become much more
mature since he wrote, and anthropogenic climate change is in fact likely to be
much more extreme than historic natural changes in the climate.

I also found his analysis shallow and scientistic. His narrative suggests that
the modern world is, and should be, run by scientific knowledge. If we can only
acquire the scientific knowledge, and get it in the hands of decision-makers,
they will make rational decisions and things will turn out more or less in a
sensible and efficient manner. There is no notion that political systems are
systematically incapable of behaving sensibly, nor that human relationship with
nature is fundamentally broken.

In his view, we currently have several major climate forecasts on different
timescales: a natural warming on a scale of centuries which started about 1700,
a natural cooling on a scale of decades which started about 1900, an impending
ice age which may strike any time in the next one or two thousand years, and a
warming caused by industrial atmospheric pollution. These temperature changes
have unpredictable knock-on effects on wind and rain, including extreme weather
events such as droughts, hurricanes and monsoons.

In his view, current (first ed. 1982, present second ed. 1995) forecasts of
human-caused global warming are exaggerated beyond the evidence. It is clear
that human pollution will have some significant impact on the climate, but it's
not currently known whether this will compare much in scale with natural
variation. He suspects that even with modern technology, human powers pale in
comparison to the power of nature.

We must know more! Climate change has big impacts, and we don't adequately
understand how it changes, whether naturally or by human intervention.

His main concern is food security, particularly in the light of growing global
populations, in his view, the most significant challenge the human race faces
over the next century. His history focuses on crops, and so does his future. He
tells the story of how in the 1950s, a new breed of wheat, Heines VII, within
years of its invention represented 80% of the wheat crop in the Netherlands due
to its resistance to yellow rust disease. In 1956, a new strain of yellow rust
emerged, and two-thirds of the winter wheat harvest was lost. We need genetic
diversity, and likewise, we need resilience, flexibility, and safety margins in
our food, population, agriculture, and energy policies.

He describes how the climate of the twentieth century has been in flux in
complex ways, not simply getting warmer, and getting significantly cooler
1940-80. No known factor, including industrial CO2, can explain the timing of
the changes, including the general warming from c. 1700. We can't presently know
whether the present warm spell will continue or end in a sudden cooling, as
occurred after the balmy year of 1540 was succeeded by the coldest period of the
Little Ice Age.

## 2026-04-15

### @{net-zero}

A very calm, practical book. Economics for a popular audience. The big idea: we
need unilateral action, not multilateral. Each nation that obeys these three
principles will eliminate their contribution to climate change in the cheapest
and most effective way: polluter pays, public money for public goods, net
environmental benefit. Decarbonisation is costly, a carbon tax is the most
efficient way of pricing this cost in.

I found him persuasive.

I was surprised to see his statistics showing that the world as a whole has done
nothing to stop causing climate change, and has continued to accelerate at the
same rate. However, I was convinced, because of his pivot from looking at
production to looking at consumption. While Europe has hugely decreased its
contribution to carbon production, its contribution to carbon consumption has
not budged, because it has offshored its heavy industries to China, where those
industries are fuelled by coal.

It was not particularly hope-inspiring. It put the onus on national politicians,
and I already don't feel hopeful that national politicians in the UK or much
anywhere else are capable of doing anything sensible. He persuaded me that this
is a sensible, practical course of action, but not that there is any likelihood
that it will happen nor that there is anything beyond mere token acts that I can
do to change anything. I enjoyed his candid, lucid, practical style. I felt like
he's the right sort of person to be running the country.

### @{heat}

George Monbiot had a hard-nosed pop-science proposal for the cheapest way we
could run the UK with a 90% cut in carbon emissions. He described what consumers
would need to be consuming, what infrastructure would need to exist. He didn't
attempt to explain the political route to get there. So, a utopian vision rather
than Realpolitik? His ultimate plea to his readers is to join a campaign group,
so that politicians will start making regulations to prohibit us from making
polluting consumption choices, albeit in ways which minimise the cost to our
lives of luxury. I was struck by his account (Chp 11) of how he struggled to
connect his abstract technological proposals to the people he beholds with his
eyes.

In his view, the problem with much environmental political campaigning up to now
is that it has assumed that consumers need to carry a very heavy burden, we need
to stop living the lives of luxury which fossil fuels have enabled, but this is
not politically feasible, because people don't want to give up their lives of
luxury.

Chp 1: in the Permian extinction, 90% of species and nearly all plants died. We
are already on a course for droughts and shortages of water and food, and the
melting of the Greenland ice cap. 2C of warming will unleash feedback loops.

Chp 2: Exxon funds climate misinformation, which ends up in mainstream media and
high politics.

Chp 11: it's hard to turn abstract scientific discussion into something
concrete. It's hard to connect it to the people I see with my eyes. I'm
vulnerable to hoping of a technological deus ex machina, but it's a dangerous
hope and must be extinguished. You need now to join a climate change campaign
group to pressure politicians to limit our freedom to continue polluting.

### @{turned-out-nice-again}

Richard Mabey pushed me to indigenise myself with my weather environment. He
showed how the weather can integrate with our moods, our art, our sense of
beauty, hope, joy, our activities and lifestyles, our environment. Living in
tune with the weather can lead us to react better to climate change, as we
listen to and accommodate the weather instead of fighting it.

Chp 5 argued that we need to accommodate the weather. He pointed to two events.
The first was the 1987 storm, how people said 'trees are at great danger from
nature,' when in fact, when we left the trees alone, they grew back with gusto.
Another is the slow advance of the sea along East Anglia's coastline, which
created the Broads in the thirteenth century, leading to houses on stilts and
special shoes, and now means a revival of stilt-houses, solar-powered boats, and
bin-barges. He told the story of the Jolly Sailors in Orford, where punters took
to the tables during a storm surge to carry on drinking, the landlord diving to
the cellar to retrieve the beer, the plaque now on the wall commemorating the
highest waterline. Contrast with building badly designed houses on floodplains,
or not building houses at all.

Chp 4 was about halcyon days, howthey can give a snub to big world events,
though seemingly only in an 'allegorical' way, seemingly nothing more than
making one feel better about things. Not about deep hope in my opinion, more
about living in tune with the weather.

## 2026-04-14

### @{wilding}

Isabella Tree made me feel hopeful. (I was already in an emotional state after
reading @{losing-eden}.) I was on the edge of tears three times while reading
_Wilding_.

_Wilding_ is the story of how Isabella and her husband rewilded their farm at
Knepp in Sussex over twenty years, and the explosion of wildlife that resulted.

She tells a story of how, while we destroy nature in so much of the world at
large, this is a little haven, and you can do something to build a little haven,
too.

Could this have something in common with the vision of the New Jerusalem?

A phrase that stuck out to me (and nearly made me cry twice) was 'keystone
species' – if we start behaving properly, we humans can become a keystone
species.

> Brooke and Banksy \[two newly introduced beavers\] got straight to work.
> Within weeks, they had cut down or coppiced dozens of shrubs and small trees,
> and built a lodge and several dams. From a tiny, trickling stream, they have
> created a pond nearly 2 acres in size. In the sizzling drought of that summer
> \[2022\], the beaver pen was a haven for wildlife, and emerald-green _*watery
> kingdom*_, filled with insects and birdsong.

I noticed her revulsion at the term 'weed', and insisted that so-called 'weeds'
are in fact native grasses and wildflowers. We should never call them 'weeds'
because they are very productive for wildlife.

There was also a theme of 'letting nature take care of itself.'

She uses modern agricultural animals (though often rare breeds) to mimic the
ecological role of ancient native animals, many of which are now globally
extinct.

The scrog took over Knepp. With grazing to keep it in check and prevent it
turning into dense canopy, scrog is good for wildlife.

She hates pesticides and artificial fertilisers.

Knepp is home to rare species threatened and/or in decline elsewhere, like
turtle doves, white storks, nightingales.

### @{losing-eden}

Lucy Jones made me feel hopeful. She made me want to get outside, touch nature
from the inside, take action, love, laugh, work. She made me feel that nature is
wonderful, and within reach, and we can do something, and we must do something
now, so let's go! Hooray, what joy! She made me go outside. I went to the shops
and found myself dangling my toes in the Braid Burn. I pondered what I could do.
I felt angry and frustrated when I couldn't think of what to do.

Key themes:

- We need nature for our mental health
- We have and are isolating ourselves from nature, which is suicidal
- We are in a crisis, and it will get worse until we change course
- We must stop destroying and start cherishing nature urgently
- We under-value nature, as if it is optional, not critical
- We must change our relationship with nature urgently

In Chp 1, she had a moving account of how in early adolescence, she turned her
emotional life off with depression and substance abuse, she became numb. To
recover, she needed nature. Recovery groups in churches with gardens. She felt
an urgent desire for nature. She walked in Walthamstow Marshes. Variety,
physicality, communion of species, light, wholeness vs alienation, isolation,
darkness, narrowness.

Chp 2. Evolutionary explanation for this? Biophilia hypothesis.

Chp 3. Children need outdoor play. UK forest schools lead the way. Joy for
children and for teachers.

Chp 6. Hard to persuade people to go for a walk in the woods, not what anyone
around them does, deviant, even though it's good for them.

Chp 7. Hard, irritating, to imagine the damage done by our consumption, the lies
of advertising. We don't see the damage we do. Grief perhaps needed, can
paralyse but can spur into action. I frequently worry about my daughter's
future, relate to BirthStrikers. I lead my daughter in thanking the food, not
just farmers, 'pig' not 'pork'.

Chp 8. Druid: as Jung exposed the psychological importance of sex, we're having
a similar revelation now about the psychological importance of nature.

Chp 10. Detroit, a biophilic city. Wild Law / Earth Jurisprudence. When the
Oneida had to move out of New York City, wolves were in the way, at the council
meetings, they asked, 'who speaks for the wolf?'

Chp 11. 'At the moment, the relationship between us and the natural world feels
like that of a truculent teenage daughter and her mother.' We need to fall in
love with nature again, stop destroying it, 'emergency,' 'Hero myth' of control
has gone too far. Time is not on our side. We must walk in the woods, say thanks
for our food, design biophilic cities, messy gardens, issue wildlife ID cards,
et alia. 'Becoming indigenous to place.' I used to feel fear at 'climate chaos
that would cause apocalyptic global instability,' guilt at having second child.
Now I feel hopeful. Action is happening. Changing relationship: not conquerors
but co-tenants.

## 2026-04-13

### @{greenhouse-effect}

Key themes:

- Warning
- Catastrophe now and in near future
- Government action
- International co-operation
- Hidden threat
- Urgency, crisis
- Scientific knowledge critically important

The authors emphasised that catastrophic effects of atmospheric pollution are
happening now and will get worse. The drought of 1988 in Africa and the USA,
threats of food shortage, and the ozone hole features prominently, but so do
floods, sea level rise, et alia.

Chp 1: increasing danger. The cause is all around us: combustion. (Hidden
threat?)

They emphasise action from governments and businesses. They briefly diverge to
claim that their book is addressed to individuals (Chp 8), asserting that the
root cause of the greenhouse effect is individual behaviour. But then it
subjects individual behaviour to bigger forces: ignorance (media environment),
poverty, third-world debt, corporate greed. It immediately turns to 'stories of
hope' entirely focused on action by NGOs, development banks, and governments.
However, it does also feature consumer advice, esp. Chp 7.

I noted an epigram by TH Huxley at the beginning of TH Huxley. The scientists to
the rescue of society?

Chp 5: Everest had three approaches. Budyko infamous for the wait-and-see
approach, accused of 'swearing in church', implies scientific research, not
enough happening. Adaptation necessary; climate change used as a bad excuse for
inaction by leaders in the Sahel. Moderation of the greenhouse effect also
necessary, implies not reducing consumption or limiting economic growth but
energy efficiency and renewables. Tim Wirth gave a speech to the US Senate
condensing Earth's history into 100 years: we must act in the next four seconds.

'Experiment' language used frequently. WMO 1985. Thatcher 27 Sep 1988 at annual
dinner of Royal Society, 'Mrs Greenmantle,' motivated by public opinion, Hinkley
Point, international politics? 'The massive experiment is going awry.'

There was a story in Chp 4 that international politics is waking up to the
threat. Thatcher, Bush 'White House effect', Gorbachov saying traditional
industrialisation means environmental catastrophe. In Chp 8, optimistic about
international co-operation, climate change as a common enemy around which the
divisions of the world must and therefore will crumble, ideological/economic
systems likely to converge, 'universal crusade to save the planet.'

Also in Chp 4: 'environmental security' idea, protecting environment needed for
national security, climate change already causing millions of climate refugees.

Book written as a warning. Chp 4: 'We must begin to take action to reduce global
warming. And we must learn that global warming is in reality a global warning to
heed the thresholds of ecological tolerance. The massive experiment is going
wrong.'

Chp 2 an interesting history of climate science and action. 1957, Scripps, Roger
Revelle. 'Great geophysical experiment.' Mauna Loa vs Antarctic cores showed CO2
had increased since 1850. Early 1970s, computer models showing increasing CO2
and temperatures. No interest in first WCC 1979 Geneva, Kenneth Hare biting his
nails, but it created WCP with a remit to 'warn governments.' It produced dire
warnings. Needed alarmism to provoke interest? Prophetic function? Major warming
and weather events (esp droughts) helped to generate attention.

Chp 3. Climate change in the past makes the world look weird: extinctions of
major animals, Europe with no trees, hippos in the Sahara 6000ya. 21st century
may be more extreme, we can't know how much. Strong emphasis on 'we don't know
enough and need more research.'

### @{lost-words}

I noticed:

- Icons
- Jumbled letters hiding in the environment
- Bramble apocalypse
- Weasel-fire connection: 2 Pet 3:10?
- Things hidden in plain sight
- Remembering things (words, names) that had been forgotten
- Naming things without names

## References