Thomas Friedman, the Power of Green

Thomas Friedman, “The Power of Green”

Central Claim: Going green is essential for America (1, 15).

Reason: Going green is the only way to preserve a good quality of life for our children and grandchildren (15): cutting terrorism (fairly well developed 2-5), reducing global warming harms (threat never well developed 5+), and preserving economic viability (not well developed)—these three don’t really play out in argument

Warrant: ethic of stewardship—not introduced until last paragraph (liberalism).

Highly Controversial Subsidiary Claim: The U.S. government must establish high standards and incentives for green technology (11, 12, 14).

Reason: The market can’t develop the necessary green technology on its own (10).

Warrant: Governments is responsible for what capitalism can’t accomplish (liberalism).

Other warrants: Market is generally the best way to get things done—more conservative (1, 9).

“People change when they have to—not when we tell them to”—pragmatic (4)

Audience—fairly liberal based on many appeals and arguments and warrants, not much prolepsis, although there’s an effort to break barriers and create middle ground (1), the argument isn’t designed to polarize or demonize.

Liberal asides: “divisiveness of the Bush years” (1); “inconvenient truth” (2); Bush’s oil policy is part of the problem (3); “President Bush is not Governor Bush”; “Dick Chaney Effect” (13);

Ethos—lots of direct experience with important people and exotic places: 2, 5, 7, 11, 13, 15; enjoys being hip and clever, which might somewhat undermine his ethos—“to get its groove back” (1); Main Street; “No Mullah Left Behind” (3); “Mother Nature is Father Greed” (9)

Context—Toward the end of the Bush presidency, but pre economic crash, pre Obama

Style—nice use of polysyndeton to show options (12-13); anaphora for motivation in peroration (14-15).

Key exigency: only really presented in peroration (14-15).

Structure—likes distributions of three: jobs, temperature, and terrorism (1); 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Internet revolution (2), yet he doesn’t always cover all three adequately, such as the Internet comment (2)

Seems to have buried the key bones of contention in some ways, particularly his controversial subsidiary claim about the government’s role in bringing about a green revolution, the problem of the price of green technology (8), and his key warrant and exigency

Often big breaks between sections (and I don’t really understand the section breaks) and unhelpful transitions: 5, 7

Likes the half empty, half full dichotomy: 9, 15

Importance of naming is of interest to rhetoricians, although it brings up the issue of green vs. sustainability (9) Some prolepsis offered, although not a lot; what is offered often aims at trying to keep more traditional/conservative folks in: 1, 3

Examples: military going green, eating its tail (a kind of a fortiori argument) 5; Wal-mart going green because it’s profitable (9); Chinese entrepreneurs (10); great Bush example (13)

Analogies—desegregation of the military (5); 98/100 doctors (6); climate change is closet (6); uncontrolled experiment (6); cell phone (10); NASA going to moon (10); behaving like Enron (11); woman’s suffrage (15); World War II (15)

Quotes lots of experts

Nice cause-effect argument about auto manufacturing (13)

Metaphor: DNA of one’s business (14); America’s DNA (15)