So apparently evil white people disproportionately pollute the planet, and minorities disproportionately are affected. This, according to J. Andrew Hoerner and Nia Robinson. The insidious evilness of white people is truly astounding. At least, if you believe these two racist Marxists.
But you know, plenty of people are attacking their ridiculous article in general terms. Let me show how absurd it is from a purely English composition point of view. Let's take the first paragraph.
"Everywhere we turn, the issues and impacts of climate change confront us. One of the most serious environmental threats facing the world today, climate change has moved from the minds of scientists and offices of environmentalists to the mainstream. Though the media is dominated by images of polar bears, melting glaciers, flooded lands, and arid desserts, there is a human face to this story as well."
Let's begin with the first sentence. If we accept philosopher Donald Davidson's claim in "Truth and Predication" that truth is to be found in the predicate of the sentence, then we can see that the first sentence says nothing at all, since many other subjects can be interchanged with it (since the predicate is in fact predicating nothing). Examples:
"Everywhere we turn, the issues and impacts of welfare confront us."
"Everywhere we turn, the issues and impacts of illegal immigration confront us."
"Everywhere we turn, the issues and impacts of racists like Hoerner and Robinson confront us."
Take your favorite issue, plug it into the subject slot (the true subject is in the prepositional phrase "of ---"), and the sentence is just as meaningful. Meaning, it has no meaning. So the entire work starts off with a meaningless statement. So far, so good.
In the second sentence we have the term "climate change." This is a meaningless term. The climate has always changed, throughout world history. It will always change. The implication is that if humans weren't around, then the climate would never change, which is false. There is an implied world view in the term "climate change" that does not match reality. Truth must map well onto reality. So we have seen that the first sentence is meaningless, and the second sentence is implicitly untrue.
The last sentence of the first paragraph is equally nonsensical: "Though the media is dominated by images of polar bears, melting glaciers, flooded lands, and arid desserts, there is a human face to this story as well." I'm not ignorant of the picture of the polar bears they are referring to, but it's not explicit. It could in fact mean any picture of a polar bear in the media. Recent pictures of melting glaciers should perhaps give us pause, but I am pretty sure that floods and deserts have been with us for a long, long time. The implication is that all the floods and deserts came about due to climate change, which is false. So the nouns of the predicate of this sentence go from "uncertain reference" to "true implication" to "false implication" and "false implication." Which makes the entire final sentence false in its implications -- not to mention very sloppy. For example, aside from the examples I gave, they wrote "dessert" for "desert," though I do suppose "arid desserts" could be blamed on climate change if we suddenly saw a rash of dry deserts due to our having less access to milk and vegetable oils due to climate change.
It's a rather embarrassing beginning to an article, and it demonstrates the poverty of thinking skills of the authors. Writing demonstrates thinking clarity and skill. They have demonstrated immediately to the reader that they are neither clear nor skilled in their writing or thinking.
12 comments:
I thought libertarians were pro-enviroment. Closing your eyes and nose to pollution doesn't make it go away. Even though England did start the Industrial Revolution, I agree with you that singling out a group of people is counter-productive. Everyone, white or whatever are responsible for the pollution to the planet and to solve these issues.
I disagree with your interpretation of the first sentence: I think it's wrong. I turned quite a few times during the last few days - literally and figuratively - and hardly ever did climate change confront me.
Who said I was anti-environment? I object to the use of the term "climate change" because it doesn't mean anything -- the climate has and always will change. One should be specific about what one is talking about. They clearly mean "anthropogenic global warming," and that's the term they should use. Of course, though their is limited consensus on the causes of global warming, scientific consensus does not equal truth. Newtonian gravitation was the scientific consensus until Einstein came along. And I want to be absolutely certain something is occurring before I start recommending poverty-creating programs (as global warming alarmists are wont to do). Fortunately, we don't actually have to make those choices. We can create global CO2 property rights protections, like the US did with sulphur emissions. (Remember acid rain? Ever wonder what happened to that?) WIth CO2 being treated as property, people will be able to buy and sell it, there will be a limited amount of it, like real property, and any environmentalist who really does care about the environment rather than using it as an excuse to justify socialism can buy up all they want to clean up the air.
Now, lemmus, it's not a matter of interpretation. Grammatically, the complete subject of the sentence is "the issues and impacts of climate change." Naturally, it is the "issues and impacts" which "confront," but what is truly important is what follows the "of," which tells us what is creating the issues and impacts. Thus, it is the true subject of the sentence, even if it is not the only part of the grammatical subject. One could rewrite the sentence "Everywhere we turn, climate change issues and climate change impacts confront us," and it would mean the same thing. Here the noun phrases would be "climate change issues" and "climate change impacts," which demonstrate the same problems.
Troy,
you may have lost me here, but I really don't see the substantial difference between the sentences. The way you rephrase the sentence it would still be wrong, because climate change or its impacts by no means confront "us" "everywhere". Thirst confronts me much more often than does climate change.
It seems like a minor point, really.
That's my point, that the sentences aren't substantially different. Certainly you can be confronted by an issue (more accurately, it is someone who confronts you about an issue), but though it is indeed ambiguous to say an issue or an impact confronts, there is an implication that is to be understood, which is that the facts make us confront the issue. Of course, your point that technically issues and impacts can't confront is correct, which only proves my point further that the sentence is a bad one. Of course, the authors are wrong too to say that we are confronted "everywhere," as "climate change" doesn't alter my reading of Plato's "Phaedrus," for example. In short, it's a bad sentence for several reasons. I focused on it being meaningless due to its subject interchangeability.
We can agree on that.
To be more precise, I didn't criticize the "confront" bit, which I can easily accept as a metaphor; I was criticizing the "everywhere" bit. Taken literally, it is simply wrong; if it is supposed to be a metaphor, it is sloppy - inexact writing. Another way to put this is to say that it is blahblah.
To add to the nitpicking--there's an error in punctuation as well-- the sentence:
"One of the most serious environmental threats facing the world today, climate change has moved from the minds of scientists and offices of environmentalists to the mainstream."
I believe there should be a second comma following "climate change"--I'm on pain drugs for a dog bite so I can't remember what the noun phrase is called there--but it should be offset but a comma before and after...
But to go further: The support given in the first section for their thesis is inconclusive. This was the biggest mistake always made by my writing students in rhetoric classes.
Basic rhetorical form should have a thesis, and followed with support, but then, following each support statement, the author must explain how the support supports this specific thesis and none other reason can. In the first section (I couldn't read more), we have a series of numbers and data, with a quick statement pointing out the environmental twist. Unfortunately, these points do not adequately support the thesis--
For example, when the article states "African Americans are economically more vulnerable to disasters and illnesses" then following we have few comments that I guess should point out how this directly relates to climate change.
I used to always tell my students--connect ALL the dots for the reader. Otherwise, we just won't buy it (and a good reader should be looking for all the dots) By simply stating something like:
"In the absence of insurance, disasters and illness (which
will increase with global warming) could be cushioned
by income and accumulated wealth. However, the average
income of African American households is fi ftyseven
percent that of non-Hispanic whites, and median
wealth is only one-tenth that of non-Hispanic whites."
#1) how does accumulated wealth cushion disaster? (Does the rich feel less pain and anxiety?)
#2) What about state programs designed to respond to disaster. Regardless or insurance or income, my understanding is that there are govt. entities in place to help with immediate health and living. (and yes--we could point out the failures of our govt depts. meant to deal with disaster and the recent incompetence--but thats a whole 'nother thesis)
#3) Hospitals are REQUIRED to give service, regardless of income or payment ability.
#4) Are disinfranchised populations so ill equipped that they wouldn't pull their resources and work together (IE: the authors assume a certain amount of ignorance in the population of which they are talking)
And this doesn't even get into the assumption of where disaster will strike. The problem with the environment is that its unpredictable--we assume there will be more hurricanes, and we assume they will continue to strike in the same pattern...
Anyway, good support is explained in complete detail and should always be directly tied back into the thesis. At the same time, when possible, counter arguments should be addressed to that particular statement
Then again the form their choosing to display their argument is limiting and creates such problems as I pointed out...Unfortunately many writers and readers think that numbers and symbols, graphs and pie charts are somehow undeniable evidence when in fact they are often to use cover a ill thought out argument with weak proof...
The state of good argument (ie good rhetoric) in this country saddens me... What gets me is somewhere in this paper there may actually be a good and intriguing argument. But they butcher it...
BTW: Where did this document come from? Howd ya come across it. How is it being used. Whats the 411? (and is that correct use of the phrase "411"?)
--and yes, I'm questioning my identity today...
Actually, that sentence is fine. "one of . . .today," describes "climate change," which is the subject of the sentence, and thus should not have a comma after it. Beware doing grammar when on pain pills! :-)
The rest of your critique is dead on, though. My point with the "nitpicking" was to show the poverty of thinking ability by the authors. They make several mistakes in reasoning, some of which you pointed out, and fail to take into consideration other factors, like the fact that these problems may be more closely related to poverty rather than race. Their conclusions reminds me of the joke that if the New York Times were to run a headline about the end of the world, it would read, "World to End Tomorrow -- Women and Minorities Hit Hardest." In the end, this article is simply an argument that we should adopt socialism because evil white people are in charge under capitalism. Personally, if you have to adopt conspiracy theories, there's a problem with your world view. This was the conclusion Tammy Bruce came to when she abandoned NOW (of which she was a local president at one time) and became a conservative (or, at least, as conservative as a lesbian is going to be).
Oh, I came across the article after I read a reference to ithere.
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