Bill Mckibben's A World At War

Bill McKibben works to create a tone of competition within his article, “A World at War”, which was published August 15th, 2016 in the New Republic magazine. By comparing the fight against global warming to a war, McKibben urges his audience to take up arms against the common enemy or run the risk of losing the battle and eventually the war. The New Republic Magazine caters toward more liberal types. The author speaks to an audience of people who believe in global warming but don’t necessarily realize the extent to which global warming effects society. The author draws out a road map of what steps one must take to fight against the common enemy. The use of the war-time comparison puts the pressure directly onto the reader’s shoulders and implies …show more content…
“In the North this summer, a devastating offensive is underway. Enemy forces have sieged huge swaths of territory…”. McKibben makes a claim in one and a half sentences without even mentioning the main issue of the article. The author’s use of choice words such as offensive, enemy forces, sieged, and territory, attracts many readers who enjoy war time movies or books and puts the reader in the frame of mind where they have to fight to survive. This places the reader in the lead role of many of their favorite war novels or shows. This attracts those readers the same way those forms of entertainment do. McKibben’s tactic of playing off of human’s natural instincts of competition elicits an immediate response from the reader. He understands the animal instinct of competition within nature. Animals compete with each other for food and resources and humans have been hardwired to be competitive beings because of this. By placing the reader in a competition-like environment, the author evokes a human instinctual response to a threat. McKibben takes advantage of this natural human response immediately without even mentioning the word