On Oct 13, 2012, at 5:40 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> I wrote the intro to this excellent collection on the unfortunate
> thing known as catastrophism
What is "catastrophism" anyway? As a catastrophist (one who thinks that the Earth's geological and evolutionary past and the recent history of the solar system and of our planet within it is marked by catastrophic interplanetary disturbances and contacts) I find it hard to understand this use of the word.
The blurb for this book says: "The authors argue that those who care about social justice and the environment should jettison doomsaying— even as it relates to indisputably apocalyptic climate change."
If "doomsaying" means proclaiming that absolutely nothing can be done to prevent indisputably apocalyptic climate change, one wonders why anyone, whether or not professing care for social justice etc., would even bother to say anything at all--they would rationally have no reason to do anything other than to devote all their energies to preparation for whatever afterlife they envisage. For others who think there still is time to limit what would otherwise be an indisputably apocalyptic process, why suggest that their calling attention to its real nature, and suggesting that the proximate elimination of carbon-based fuels is therefore an absolute imperative-- as this blurb seems to do--is "catastrophism?"
Shane Mage "Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64