Is Humanity Suicidal

950 Words4 Pages
Saving Our Environment “Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations” (Nightingale). The way the environment looks is a reflection of how we treat it. If it looks dull and trashed it means that we are not treating the environment with care, but if it looks bright and clean, it shows we are being good to the environment. People do not take the way they treat the environment seriously leading to decreasing of ecosystems. Daniel Quinn and E. O. Wilson, two outspoken environmentalists, use various rhetorical strategies to argue that we must take seriously the impacts of our lifestyle choices on the planet we inhabit. Daniel Quinn, in “The New Renaissance,” argues that our lifestyle choices are important because we are responsible for what happens to everything around us. Within the context of discussing how we can live sustainably, Quinn writes “Changing people’s minds is something each one of us can do, wherever we are, whoever we are, whatever kind of work we’re doing. . . it’s the challenge your future depends on. What we must have (and nothing less) is a whole world full of people with changed minds. And you can be the first” (85). He means we can influence people to help change the world and the environment. Changing people’s minds is the first step to a better environment. If we can convince people to change their daily habits, such as using less water and recycling, and become more eco-friendly, we can have a better ecosystem and eventually live sustainably. Quinn hopes that by changing other people’s minds we will figure out how to live sustainably. One rhetorical strategy Daniel Quinn uses in ‘The New Renaissance,” is repetition to persuade readers that humans can’t live apart from the rest of the community. For example, within the context of discussing animal extinction, Quinn writes “it is
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