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Analysis Of Al Gore 's The Climate Emergency

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Analysis of Al Gore’s “The Climate Emergency”
The essay “The Climate emergency” is based on a speech made by Al Gore at Yale University in April 2004 to a room full of students. Al Gore is the former Vice President of the United States under President Bill Clinton. He is also an environmental rights activist. In the beginning of the speech the former vice president shares a story about his trip to a Shoneys Restaurant with his wife Tipper to draw the audience in. (300-301). Once he captures their attention he is able to focus them on his real message.
Al Gore states that he believes humans are the cause of the current climate emergency and the rapid rise of co2 levels in the atmosphere. He believes that we can also be the cure to end …show more content…

His tone in this part of the speech conveys his standpoint on the climate emergency and shows he deeply believes that we must do something to change our current way of thinking in order for us to believe that we are in an emergency state. Gore explains that our relationship with the Earth has had a drastic turn since the creation of technology and that through technology our way of thinking has changed. As the technology grows our life span increases. While this may seem to be good thing, it has also had a negative affect. With the increase in population, new technology has evolved to the point where we are making a greater carbon footprint, than we have in the past. The newer the technology the greater the demand and the greater the demand the higher the co2 levels rise. We are so busy creating things we have forgotten that some of these creations have negative consequences on our environment.
Al Gore includes several examples of what impacts the rising co2 has caused in his speech. For example, he explained that the extreme heat wave in Europe in 2003 killed an estimated 20,000 people. (302). While this is good use of pathos by how damaging the climates current state can affect both humans and our environment, he does not offer solid evidence to back this claim that it was the co2 that caused the heat

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