At what point are we going to take responsibility and protect the Earth instead of allowing it to be destroyed? The Earth can only handle a so much growth before it reaches its max sustainability. In each text, sustainability refers to how much growth the Earth can maintain without being destroyed. Wendell Berry, Jared Diamond, and Bill McKibben all use rhetoric to appeal to their audience using ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is an appeal to the audience’s ethics. Pathos is an appeal to the audience’s emotions. Logos is an appeal to the audience’s logic. Each author uses all three kinds of rhetoric to persuade the audience to believe in their views on sustainability.
Let’s take a look at Wendell Berry’s ‘“It All Turns on Affection”: 2012 Jefferson Lecture”’. Berry uses rhetoric to stress the importance that humans need to respect the Earth and take steps to learn and take care of it. He isn’t targeting a specific group to be his audience, he is targeting everyone because he believes that everyone has to contribute in order to help the cause. The purpose of this essay is for it to be a call to action to fix a problem we created and for people to join together to help protect the environment and respect it. The basis for Berry’s rhetoric is that Berry and his family have lived on their land for 200 years and have been the caretakers of the land and that is why he believes that we need to stand together and take care of our Earth. Berry’s argument is a product of his audience