Analyzing Rhetorical Strategies in "Obama and Climate Change"

In this post I will be analyzing my text for use different rhetorical strategies. I will be looking for Appeals to character, logic, and emotion.


Appeals to Credibility or Character:

• Mckibben uses the "we" voice when talking about protests and the environmental movement. This gives the impression (and rightly so) that he is personally involved in everything. 
• The piece is well-written, which increases his credibility. 
• He refrences credible sources: "To reach that two-degree goal, say organizations such as the Carbon Tracker Initiative, the World Bank, the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, HSBC and just about everyone else who's looked at the question, we'd need to leave undisturbed between two-thirds and four-fifths of the planet's reserves of coal, gas and oil." 
• He uses a direct quote from Obama 
• He acknowledges counterarguments: "Obama loyalists argue that these are as much as you could expect from a president saddled with the worst Congress in living memory. But that didn't mean that the president had to make the problem worse, which he's done with stunning regularity." 
• And if the audience values the planet and our continued existence on it, then he also appeals to values or beliefs shared by the audience. 

All of these strategies make him seem more credible. If I didn't already have a similar viewpoint on the issue coming in, then I would probably be skeptical of some of his criticisms of Obama's policy toward addressing Climate Change. It seems like only one side is being presented and that many of the issues are more complicated than he's giving them credit for.




Appeals to Emotion

• He uses emotionally compelling narratives: "This past August, as the largest forest fire in the history of the Sierra Nevadas was burning in Yosemite National Park, where John Muir invented modern environmentalism, the Bureau of Land Management decided to auction 316 million tons of taxpayer-owned coal in Wyoming's Powder River basin. According to the Center for American Progress, the emissions from that sale will equal the carbon produced from 109 million cars." 
• He uses shocking statistics: "we've had the warmest year in American history – 2012 – featuring a summer so hot that corn couldn't grow across much of the richest farmland on the planet. We've seen the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and the largest wind field ever measured, both from Hurricane Sandy. We've watched the Arctic melt, losing three quarters of its summer sea ice. We've seen some of the largest fires ever recorded in the mountains of California, Colorado and New Mexico. And not just here, of course – his term has seen unprecedented drought and flood around the world. The typhoon that just hit the Philippines, according to some meteorologists, had higher wind speeds at landfall than any we've ever seen." 

I think that this is one of his strongest areas. He really makes the reader feel that this is a dire and emotional issue -- it's the future of our species on this beautiful planet. The way he describes the Sierras burning or the "selling off" of the Powder River Basin is really moving, especially if you value wild places.




Appeals to Logic:

• He effectively organizes his paragraphs and ideas to lead the reader logically to his argument, 
• There are clear transitions between sections of text 
• He cites experts for much of his information.

His main strongpoint in this area is that he lays out everything very clearly so that his argument seems reasonable. He writes about the science (which he reminds us is agreed upon by almost all leading scientists and national governments)

Webb, Michaela. "my dog is cute" 2012

Reflection: I read Olivia's and Hunter's  blog posts. I realized that my article relies pretty equally on the three rhetorical approaches. This is super effective because he weaves emotional appeal into each paragraph through language and sentence-structure choices, but still had a strong logical flow and established credibility.