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| Image courtesy of Google Images.
According to Sierraclub.org, mountaintop removal coal mining blows
up forested mountains to extract the underlying coal, and then dump
the mining waste into adjacent valleys. This pollutes wastelands and
severely impacts local communities.
Every single one of us loves our home and would never want to be ran
off of it, have it destroyed, or just be violated. The people of the
Appalachia for years have been terrorized by heartless coal mining companies
and the NRDC, (The Natural Resources Defense Council) is exposing these
companies to stop them.
Mountaintop removal coal mining is environmentally wrong and it can be 100%
avoidable. As stated on Energy.gov, the Energy Department says that coal is
the largest domestically produced energy source, and generates a significant
chunk of our energy. Instead of mining coal or blowing up mountains to
obtain it, these companies should realize the environment and the people
living in it are having to pay the price (Sierraclub.org). Coal is plentiful
and it is nothing but harmful. Instead of looking at "Going green" in
money terms, the companies should see it in environmental terms by finding
alternative energy solutions.
We have to become more aware of mountaintop removal coal mining.
Although the population in the Appalachian Mountains is very minuscule
when compared to other regions, those people there still matter. If this method
of coal mining isn't stopped, the area where you live could be next to be blown
up.
This method of coal extraction shouldn't exist any longer, it has no positive
effects on the environment. People and animals are being harmed, land is
being torn up and more fossil fuels are being used. The question is,
are you finished with companies doing whatever they want to the environment,
and no one stopping them?
Works Cited
"Destroying Appalachia One Mountain at a Time." Sierraclub.org.
Web. 25 Nov. 2013.
"Coal." Energy.gov. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.
Haney, Bill. dir. The Last Mountain. Sundance Film, 2011. nrdc.org.
Nrdc, 2011. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.
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Before I get into all the fun critique stuff, I just wanted to say that I love your title and thought it was very appropriate for you post. Good song, too! You did an excellent job with your persuasive purpose of informing the reader about coal mining and mountain top removal and provoking them to take action to stop it. Throughout your post you effectively used all three rhetorical strategies. It is clear you did your research and took the time to find reliable sources to get your facts from. Because of this I really felt like I could believe what you were writing about, appealing to ethos. I think you used logos and pathos the strongest in your blog. For logos you have a great understanding of the topic and provided many examples and information about it. For pathos you found a way to connect with this environmental issue by explaining how special this area is to you and how you have grown to appreciate it. You really played with the readers emotions with the before and after pictures of the mountain tops. Also, the YouTube video you included was a great way to show how beautiful the Appalachian Mountains are, what the people are doing to stop it, and how dangerous this process is both while the mountain tops are being destroyed and the long lasting effects. Your blog successfully informs your readers about how important this issue is and it needs to be stopped. I think you could maybe introduce the authors of the sources you got your information from to enhance your ethos even more. Your blog was very easy to read and I learned a lot from it. Great work!
ReplyDeleteGreat article! I believe that this was a very effective blog post to persuade the readers that this form or process of mining is just ridiculous. You did a very good job at using all three rhetorical strategies! I loved the title because it was very catching. We talked about how the title is one of the most important things of a blog because it has to catch the attention of the reader or else they won’t read it. I believe that you did a great job with that. I believe that you affectively used pathos to your advantage by multiple ways. With inserting information about yourself, it really gets the reader on more of an emotional or personal level with you which greatly enhances your pathos and ability to persuade them. Also the video that you linked in the article really helped pathos because it showed how beautiful those mountains are and how they are being destroyed. Seeing this and seeing how it is affecting the people there and ultimately effecting a lot of other people too, it gets the reader on more of an emotional level to help them believe or perhaps even take action to stopping the mining. The only other thing I would have loved to see in this article is maybe a story about you hiking, or being in the mountains. Other than that, great article!
ReplyDeleteThis post was awesome! The way that you explain to the audience how harmful coal mining is and the deteriorating effects it has on the environment is very clear. One of the best uses of the rhetorical strategies you use is ethos. When you bring up, “People live in the mountains, kids go to school in this region, and animals also reside here, this method of coal extraction is unnecessary and should be eliminated” (1), it really makes you think about how people other than the coal mining companies are affected by this process. Along the lines of showing how it would make us feel if this happened to an area around us, another sentence you write is a perfect example of pathos. “Every single one of us loves our home and would never want to be ran off of it, have it destroyed, or just be violated,” (3). The emotion behind this piece is very blatant, and you are very successful in persuading the audience how coal mining needs to be stopped. A way to make this article more persuasive, however, is if you included some statistics. By the way, the GIFs are a big reason this was such a good post!
ReplyDelete