path: root/reading-log.md

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

## 2026-04-24

### @{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