[lbo-talk] catastrophism

shag carpet bomb shag at cleandraws.com
Sun Oct 14 06:51:38 PDT 2012


I can't tell much from the blurb but there were a couple of guys who wrote a book 2-3 years ago about doomsday thinking among environmentalists. Their argument was that, empirically, when environmentalist go negative and focus on how horrible everything is, it just depresses everyone and they feel overwhelmed, like nothing can be done. They said that, empirically, you got more involvement in environmental social movements when the focus was not negative.

can't recall their names but I remember suggesting that Doug have them on the show. Maybe that is what the authors in the book are getting at?

At 06:20 PM 10/13/2012, Shane Mage wrote:


>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
>
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