ROUGH DRAFT!

Kristine Vulaj

English 1020

10 June, 2011

Professor Joe

Edward O. Wilson expresses his ideas through many rhetorical strategies. His point in composing this article is to stress the idea that conservationists and environmentalists try to gain political power to the point were they are “on top of the world.” They try their best to “expand government, especially the federal government” (Wilson, 153) to protect the environment. However, Wilson then writes from the opposing point of view saying that the critics are anti-environmentalists and that they do not care about the environment at all but economic growth. To sum it all up, the rhetorical concepts Wilson used in his article will be later discovered and be further clarified as to how the environmentalists pushed themselves to get their power.

Wilson uses a very strong tone in the writing he is expressing, I can’t tell if he is being sarcastic in the tone or if he is actually very angry. He has a strong opinion on how the conservationists and the environmentalists are trying to gain a lot of power they don’t need. They are trying to be the best in the world and he is not convinced they should. Wilson explains how he is “all about the environment and believes that specie extinction is bad, but conservation should be kept in perspective” (Wilson, 153). This is just human selfishness, are they actually concerned about the human specie or are they just worried about the environmental issues?

The rhetorical device Wilson uses a lot in his writing is aphorism. Aphorism is a concise statement designed to make a point or illustrate a commonly held belief. Evidently Wilson is conveying he doesn’t want these conservationists and environmentalists to have all this power. Wilson is extremely angry that these “wackos” are trying to gain all this power. He is trying to make his point that this is just pure selfishness, they care nothing about the human species and care everything about the environment. They think that human species are overpopulated earth and that they should do something about it. Are these conservationists and environmentalists trying to eradicate the human species? So maybe what they are trying to do is not good after all maybe this is just leading to something bad and that is why Wilson is saying this is not good and they should not make laws and have this much power if they do not even know what there doing. There is a lot of sarcasm in this writing like when he explains to “relax your guard when these people are in power and your property rights go down the tube”.