Analysis Of Ehrlich's Essay 'How To Poison The Earth'

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The environment has become a popular topic this year due to our on-going drought. It has always been a serious issue; something Saukko informs us in her sarcastic essay “How to Poison the Earth”. She uses sarcasm and irony in her essay hoping her readers will do the complete opposite of what she is saying because of the stress she puts on the harming chemicals we use every day. We do not appreciate our environment and take it for granted. This ideal is what Ehrlich's essay “Chronicles of Ice” focuses on by using analogies and scientific definitions to describe aspects of glaciers. The melting of the glaciers introduces us to the topic of global warming and how our society is doing nothing to stop it from getting worse. Gawande’s “The Cancer-Cluster …show more content…

She uses Perito Moreno as an example and divides her essay into categories: admiration for glaciers, how glaciers function, the inside of glaciers, and global warming effects. Satire may not be found in this essay, but we still get a sense of entertainment with the way she makes nature seem like it’s something that is taken for granted. She opens our eyes to the power something as simple as a glacier withholds in order to see the big threat behind all environmental destruction. Her uses of analogies clarify the purpose of her essay by stating them in the beginning of her paragraphs while defining them clearly right afterwards. One example is “a glacier is time incarnate” (Ehrlich 2). In this quote Ehrlich wants us to know that losing a glacier is like losing any human because we lose all kinds of history that cannot be restored ever again. She even references the bible to describe this fall we are living with the loss of glaciers. Ehrlich made a connection between “the rise of our smokestack and tailpipe society” and the rise in water and air temperatures by using the oxygen bubbles the glaciers provide (Ehrlich 2). She state “as snow becomes firm and then ice, oxygen bubbles are trapped in the glacier, providing samples of ancient atmosphere: carbon dioxide and methane” (Ehrlich 2). Our cars and factories produce these gases in large amounts which have greatly affected our air quality and the cleanliness as well as freshness of our water. She manages to make her point clear, making the reader look at nature with another

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