To Reduce Your Carbon Footprint or Not

To Reduce Your Carbon Footprint or Not

As long as I can remember my mother has repeatedly tried to reduce her carbon footprint in multiple ways. From recycling, to changing light bulbs, to using reusable grocery bags, she strives to set an example for me by caring about our environment. One memory that heavily influenced my view on the severity of global warming and how damaged our environment truly is, was when my parents brought my best friend and me to The Turtle Hospital in Marathon when I was eight years old. The Turtle Hospital had a significant amount of turtles injured from eating trash they found in the ocean. Joey, my favorite baby turtle, was suffering from a clogged digestive tract due to eating a plastic bag; which does have the potential to kill a sea turtle. Every year since then, a group of friends and I have gone down to the keys to participate in bridge clean ups. The bridge clean ups reduce the amount of trash along the shoreline and in the ocean; in small way it helps reduce the amount of pollution. Pollution is one of the main causes of global warming, and even though my efforts may not make a huge impact on a global scale, on a local scale it makes all the difference in the world to the turtles and the people of the Keys. The environmental journalist, Michael Pollan's writing "Why Bother?" Pollan observes the struggles of effectively stopping global warming and improving the environment.

Michael Pollan quoted Wendell Berry, "Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live." This quote is the basis of "Why Bother" not doing anything simply because it is too much of a challenge, or changing our personal habits for the betterment of the environment. Pollan's main environmental change stresses the vast impact growing your own garden has on the environment. It is a simple act that can reduce your carbon footprint and make each individual rely less on main food sources in case that food source won't be there one day. On the other hand, Pollan argues the fact that whatever efforts you make to eliminate the amount of carbon you use, there is someone else, your "evil twin", using twice the amount of carbon you are, and therefore no change happens.

Although Michael Pollan makes a few good points on how challenging it is to make a significant difference to better the global environment and appeals to pathos. Pollan fails to cite where he got his information, how credible his information is and give simpler solutions that are more realistic for everyone.

Pollan uses logos and pathos to show the problems with caring for the environment and what is stopping the changes. "Cheap fossil fuels allow us... to solve our problems." Pollan states that people use fossil fuels in everyday life because they are easy to use, available (right now) and cheap. A good point

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