Comparing Logos And Ethos In Al Gore's Acceptance Speech

In 2007 Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize and in his acceptance speech, he urges people to think and act on climate change. He uses a lot of pathos or emotion in his speech to create the urgency of climate change. During most of his speech, Gore uses a lot of words that excite emotion to get people to want to change. He effectively uses pathos throughout his whole speech. Unfortunately, he is not as effective with logos (logic) and ethos (his credibility). Gore starts off with an anecdote about how Alfred Nobel wanted to better mankind by producing dynamite. Instead he was labeled “Merchant of death” in a mistaken obituary that was published before his death. This changed Alfred’s life by making him go after peace. 7 years later he created the Nobel peace prize. Gore relates the story to himself by saying that he read his own political obituary. He says that the pain of that political obituary brought an opportunity to serve his purpose. This is the only ethos he brings to his speech. That he is similar to Alfred Nobel and that his purpose is to serve …show more content…
He does not back up things he says and most of his statements are worded in a way to respond to emotion rather than logic. He does say “We dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere.” He has a number here that seems like he has done some research on how much pollution is being dumped. But he does not state what type of pollution that is, or any facts behind that. It is possible he did do research and that he is right that we are dumping lots of pollution in the environment, but it would have been a lot more effective if we had stated more on that. He also states that there is a connection between climate crisis and “the afflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV-AIDS, and other pandemics.” Again here is a statement of fact that he does not back up. He does not state how those afflictions are related to climate