Logical While Illogical

For my Rhetorical Analysis, I have chosen the article “Buying Into the Green Movement” by Alex Williams. The Authors rhetorical purpose is to convince his audience of fashionable green consumers that buying lots of green products don’t help, only reducing consumption lowers the carbon footprint significantly. I agree with the author, but I think his argument could be stronger.

First I will talk about his comparison of hybrid and gasoline cars. Initially it seems obvious that buying an expensive hybrid car that only gets 22 miles to the gallon on the highway isn’t reducing consumption, but his example of the LS 600h Lexus leaves out some important details. According to the Lexus website, this car has all wheel drive and 438 horsepower. I don’t know everything about cars, but what would an equivalent all gas engine of that power get on the highway? He compares an $11,000 Toyota Yaris with 40 miles to the gallon, and I doubt that car is all wheel drive or has horsepower anywhere close. If he wants to compare hybrid and purely gasoline cars mileage, then he needs them to be equivalent in power for it to be a level comparison. I do think that a more expensive car does take finer materials and more manufacturing processes to build, and that means a larger carbon print most likely, but you can find expensive gas or hybrid, and cheap gas or hybrid cars. The comparison must be to an equivalent powered car to make that it valid. I think a stronger argument would be that the Toyota Yaris is greener, and that just because something is advertised as green doesn’t necessarily mean it is.

Another piece of his argument that I found week was his this sentence; “Environmentalists say some products marketed as green my pump more carbon into the atmosphere than choosing something more modest, or simply nothing at all.” That’s like saying; some ice cream may cost more than cheaper ice cream, or simply no ice cream at all. It states the obvious and doesn’t further his point.

I agree that getting people to buy products by calling them green, even if they don’t really make a difference, is not helping. But I think this could have been argues with more logical reasons. So many fashionable green products don’t make a significant difference in the carbon footprint, but perhaps it is better than nothing.