Persuasive paper

Kathy Kuang

Brown

ENG 306

9 December 2016

An Open Letter from the Ideal Self to the Real Self

Word Count: 1039

Dear Kathy,

I would like to confront you on a global issue that is escalating: climate change. I have no doubts that you have become well acquainted with the topic (I mean, you just wrote a research paper on it) and thus, you know the severity of the problem and the political activity aimed to assuage the issue. However, have you considered personal endeavors that would easily facilitate mitigation? Well, I am here to kindly remind you to self reflect on your own behaviors that contribute to the problem.

As you already know, human activities that require fossil fuel burning is the leading cause of climate change (Birch 184). Naturally, as a human being that lives in a technologically advanced society where practically everything relies on electricity produced by fossil fuels, it is almost impossible for you to not exacerbate the green house effect. Everything you use from artificial light, to heating the stovetop to cook, to driving to school requires you to burn fossil fuels and, unfortunately, all of these tasks are necessary for living. Of course, there is a way to avoid using technology to accomplish the same aforementioned tasks. For instance, you could use natural sunlight (do homework and other tasks during the daytime), eat only raw foods, and walk or bike to school, but realistically, adopting these changes will convolute life (and life is already difficult as it is). Technology, on the other hand, facilitates daily activities and its revolutionary effects on easing life are valid reasons to be resistant on ousting your climate-exacerbating habits.  However, consider this: this reluctant mentality is analogous to the mentality that barricades efficient international political action against climate change.

In both cases, a long-established norm is being challenged and changing that norm proves to be an arduous task. For international discussions, capitalism is the norm, thus economic advantage is the guiding factor in policy making (Randalls 230).  Financial profits depend on burning fossil fuels (for instance, the usage of machines to inexpensively create products), and mitigating climate change will compromise this long-established dependency, since it inherently translates to reducing fossil fuel burning.  This contradiction demands sacrificing one entity for the other and ambivalence leading to reluctance naturally results. A similar argument can be made with personal habits, where your habits would be the established norm. Changing your habits compromises your way of living, and thus, you become averse to the idea; you have created a routine throughout your twenty years of living and you would have to forgo this comfort in order to lesson your carbon footprint. Nevertheless, the high regard of economic effects in international political discussions has prevented unanimous policy agreement. If you want to prevent a similar unsuccessful fate, you must decide that the cost of changing your habits outweighs the subsequent beneficial effects of reducing carbon emissions.  

There are a multitude of reasons to mitigate climate change. Firstly, climate change is worsening. According the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), “warming of the climate system is unequivocal…. [C]oncentrations of greenhouse gases are increasing [and] will continue under all…scenarios until 2100…and will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions [because] global sea level will continue to rise through the 21^st century” (Birch 184).  As suggested by the report, because the increase is unequivocal, it is important for you to contribute to reducing carbon emissions. Although it seems like international effort would be the major mechanism to substantially reduce emissions, personal efforts is actually also another major contributor, especially considering the summation of ecologically damaging personal habits of other inhabitants of the Earth. If everyone reflected on their habits and mindfully altered even the slightest behavior, the reduction would be drastic; as you have seen with protests, collective action is effective. The amalgamation of people from disparate identities in the People’s Climate March, for instance, has created visibility that highlights their passionate request to catalyze the slow action.  Although you are only one out of about seven billion other humans, and your own effort may contribute little to the overall reduction of green house gas emissions, in order to later reasonably persuade others to change their actions (and to ultimately have a large-scale reduction in green house gas emissions), you must first convince yourself to change your habits.

In conjunction to the exacerbation of climate change at an alarming rate is the worsening of global health. There are many health problems related to pollution, an effect of carbon emissions that simultaneously affect climate change. As stated by a pediatrician,  “Carbon pollution directly results in asthma, heart disease and cancer” (Foderaro). Furthermore, there is an estimate of 2.5 million deaths annually caused by pollution and the number continues to increase (Niera 546). As an aspiring physician who cares about the well-being of other people and believes in preventative care, climate change should be even more concerning. More people will contract illnesses by the simply breathing, a necessary act of living. Imagine people who take precautions against disease by eating a healthy diet and exercising suffer through atrocious symptoms. Not only will morbidity increase as the statistic suggests, there is also an increase in mortality. Friends, family, mentors, other wonderful people in our lives will suffer from cardiovascular disease or cancer before prematurely dying. The implications are far from encouraging.

Now is the time to act. As I had mentioned earlier, although there is international activity that will presumptuously be more effective at thwarting climate change, that activity is slow (this is why an entire march, the People’ Climate March, dedicated to influence these international discussions eventuated). Because international discussions involve so many countries, for any change to really occur, it takes time. Personal habits, however, can occur as soon as the person is willing to modify their actions. Besides, the sooner you act, the closer you are to making an impact.

These arguments, however sound they may be, are meaningless unless you are willing to give up your comfortable habits.  Although it is unrealistic to overturn your habits, I invite you to at least alter some of your habits, especially those that are more detrimental, and to lessen the usage of electricity-dependent appliances as much as you reasonably can.

Sincerely,

The Ideal You

Works cited

Birch, Eugenie. “A Review of ‘Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability’ and ‘Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change’.” Journal of American Planning Association, vol. 80, no. 2, 2014, doi: 10.1080/01944363.2014.954464. Accessed 25 Oct. 2016.

Foderaro, Lisa. “Taking a Call for Climate Change to the Streets.” The New York Times, 21 Sept. 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/nyregion/new-york-city-climate-change-march.html?_r=0. Accessed 20 Oct. 2016.

Neira, Maria. "The 2014 WHO Conference on Health and Climate." Bulletin of the World Health Organization, vol. 92, no. 8, 2014, pp. 546,

            doi: 10.2471/BLT.14.143891. Accessed 25 Oct. 2016.

Randalls, Samuel. "Optimal Climate Change: Economics and Climate Science Policy Histories (from Heuristic to Normative)." Osiris, vol. 26, no. 1, 2011, pp. 224-242,

doi: 10.1086/661273. Accessed 18 Oct. 2016.

 

Paragraph structure analysis

1)    In both cases, a long-established norm is being challenged and changing that norm proves to be an arduous task. For international discussions, capitalism is the norm, thus economic advantage is the guiding factor in policy making (Randalls 230).  Financial profits depend on burning fossil fuels (for instance, the usage of machines to inexpensively create products), and mitigating climate change will compromise this long-established dependency, since it inherently translates to reducing fossil fuel burning.  This contradiction demands sacrificing one entity for the other and ambivalence leading to reluctance naturally results. A similar argument can be made with personal habits, where your habits would be the norm. Changing your habits compromises your way of living, and thus, you become averse to the idea; you have created a norm throughout your twenty years of living and you would have to forgo this comfort in order to lesson your carbon footprint. Nevertheless, the high regard of economic effects in international political discussions has prevented unanimous policy agreement. If you want to prevent a similar unsuccessful fate, you must decide that the cost of changing your habits outweighs the subsequent beneficial effects of reducing carbon emissions. 

a.     The purpose of the paragraph is to exemplify how the regard for financial profits in international policy making for climate change has prevented successful discussions will lead to sacrificing the mitigation of climate change if I prized my comfort zone more.

b.     The main characters are international policymaking, financial profits, contradiction, changing your habits and you.

c.     Mixed topic strings are used in the paragraph.

2)    Now is the time to act. As I had mentioned earlier, although there is international activity that will presumptuously be more effective at thwarting climate change, that activity is slow (this is why an entire march, the People’ Climate March, dedicated to influence these international discussions eventuated). Because international discussions involve so many countries, for any change to really occur, it takes time. Personal habits, however, can occur as soon as the person is willing to modify their actions. Besides, the sooner you act, the closer you are to making an impact.

a.     The purpose of this paragraph is to convince the reader to act promptly since international activity is slow.

b.     The main characters are international activity/discussions, personal habits, and you.

c.     The paragraph uses mixed topic strings

Explication

The consideration of the audience (the importance of which was stressed in the persuasive writing intro PowerPoint and a later PowerPoint that is was not published on d2l) guided the majority of my choices in writing this essay. The open letter is addressed to me, with an overhearing audience that has similar characteristics as me. To elaborate, I am a person that is relatively well educated about the climate change issue and believe that fossil fuel burning primarily causes it.  In addition, I am passionate about the climate change issue, live in a technologically advanced part of the world, use electricity on a frequent basis, and most importantly, am not changing my habits to foment the mitigation of global warming. Furthermore, the letter is from the ideal me to the real me. That is, it is from the “me” that I aspire to become to the current “me” that is flawed. Keeping my audience in mind, I speak casually in a voice that resembles the “real” me, but also simultaneously ensure that I keep a slightly professional voice to develop the ethos of the “ideal me”, which is suppose to be a better, wiser version of the “real me”. To complement that, I made sure to cite scholarly sources in my arguments to provide evidence that I am professionally knowledgeable. In consideration of my overhearing audience, because I reference the People’s Climate March several times in my paper, it would be fitting to publish this open letter in The New York Times, where the audience would predominantly be New York residents. This population of individuals would hopefully be familiar to the march, since it occurred in New York, New York. Furthermore, since the march occurred in that city, the audience would most likely have similar ideals as me; they would believe that climate change is real and be residents of a technologically advanced country, for instance.

 I relied on rhetorical devices (ethos, pathos, logos, and a bit of kairos), knowing that these elements are required for effective persuasive essays.  I mostly utilized logos because I appreciate convincing facts and statistics more than other rhetorical devices. In fact, the bulk of my essay is based on logic; I used logos in addressing hypothetical concerns of the audience, which constitutes half of my essay. I devoted most of my writing to these concerns, knowing that I (the audience) appreciate considerations of opposing arguments (for impartiality) and sometimes give excuses for myself (which is why I needed to write this persuasive letter to myself in the first place). The particular facts that I included were also specifically catered to me. I first needed to know the severity of the climate change issue to really persuade myself to not only consider changing my habits, but to actually change my habits. Another example is when I dedicated a paragraph to health issues related to climate change; I am passionate about anything related to health. Although logos is effective, it must be complemented by ethos to ensure its validity. The ethos in this paper, as aforementioned, was developed by the citation of scholarly sources and the fact that I know the writer extremely well. Furthermore, because I am extremely sympathetic, if not empathetic, I did include moments of pathos. Lastly, to galvanize my desire to actually change my habits, I added kairos to prove the necessity of acting as soon as possible.

Within my arguments based on logos, I also referenced terminology related to protest. I (as the audience) am enamored with the idea of a collective identity (in Melucci’s terms), particularly when that results in collective action. This is why I used it as part of a logical argument. I briefly exemplified how communal efforts produced visibility, which ultimately contributed to the effectiveness of the effort (I was particularly referencing the People’s Climate March in the letter). Similarly, in addressing communal efforts, I implied the concept of dissemination when I mentioned (on page 3, first paragraph) about ultimately persuading others to also consider their behaviors. I knew that dissemination is eventually required for effectively mitigating climate change, as suggested by DeLuca and Peeples.

Finally, I ended my paper with a very brief conclusion to avoid sounding redundant or summarizing my arguments, an unnecessary task since the letter was short – no reminder needed. I included a warrant, which aimed to quickly create coherence and a call to action as a persuasive takeaway (since this is a persuasive paper).