Rhetorical Analysis Of We Are All Noah Now By Thomas Friedman

The delicate ecosystem is crumbling faster than many people realize and those who do choose to ignore the facts. Three time Pulitzer prize winner and New York Times columnist, Thomas L. Friedman, vocalizes the importance of persevering nature and the diversity of creatures, in his article, “We Are All Noah Now”. Friedman’s purpose is to prompt his audience to take action in their lives against the destruction of this beautiful earth. The majority of people want to leave “saving the planet” to someone else with more influence, but everyone is needed in this effort. Otherwise, human naïveté, the author believes, will bring the end of ages. Through the use of statistics, testimonies, and authorities, the author is able to make tangible evidence in favor of taking action. The columnist also appeals to logic to spell out to the audience the importance of diversity for the continuation of the human race. To start of the article, Friedman grabs the reader’s attention by describing the newest edition of Oxford Junior Dictionary and how it has dropped certain “nature words” including: “acorn”, “dandelion”, “fern”, “nectar”, “otter”, …show more content…
The author starts this section with a comment saying, “we and our kids are rapidly becoming the Noah generation” and to add credibility to his statement he quotes renowned oceanographer, Sylvia Earle, with a complementary statement about being witness to the greatest era of loss in history. The author goes on to describe statistics from the Great Elephant Census, which reported last week that the average decrease in population is at a record eight percent a year. This use of statistics adds credibility to the article, but does not do much in swaying anyone over. However, it does set up the next set of statistics to make more of an