Excerpted from Rush Limbaugh’s The Way Things Ought to Be, in “The Environmental Mindset” Limbaugh describes to his audience the so called “radical environmental movement” that was occurring when he wrote his book. He gives an explanation of his view on the environmental movement’s goals and followers. While looking at Limbaugh’s excerpt, he judges the entire movement based upon only a portion of the followers. Every claim he makes describing the followers for instance, “Most of the people running environmental groups don’t work,” has no references for such a drastic generalization (Limbaugh, 993, p. 41).
Upon making such claims he attempts to state that environmentalists are making rash claims themselves and are using scare tactics in order to gain more attention from others. Limbaugh’s overall claim he wishes for his audience to believe is that environmentalist groups are taking their beliefs and exaggerating past extent. Near the end he claims that the Earth would be able to regenerate itself and how we are unable to destroy it. Limbaugh (1993) initially mentions how environmentalist ideas will subjugate other people’s property for “environmental concerns” (p. 0). Using this point, Limbaugh gains the attention of readers who wish to continue holding on to their land or audience members intrigued how they would lose land. He also sets precedent for what the remainder of the article would detail when speaking about the loss of property.
However, immediately after gathering attention, Limbaugh (1993) over generalizes what environmentalist groups are aiming for, stating that the group “preserves the earth at all cost” and how they will “move us closer to Third World conditions” (p. 40). When he first mentioned loss of land, he ets a template of how his article will be towards land loss from environmental groups. In reality, he quickly changes from statement to statement on how environmentalist are deplorable groups who want attention and fame. When making his rash claims, Limbaugh uses fear mongering in order to advert the readers eyes only to the negatives of these groups which further reinforces his opinion. He completely neglects the other side’s positives in what they are trying to achieve.
Instead of giving any praise for what they have done, he generalizes them as radical non-working groups who have not done nything worthwhile (Limbaugh, 1993, p. 441). One instance he neglects is the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement which was able to prevent contamination of water and soil by companies that had harmed the population and plants within the surrounding area (South Korea, 2016). He consistently ignored the favorable actions some of the environmental groups had done in order to make the audience believe nothing beneficial has come from them.
Along with his fear mongering and ignorance towards the environmentalist groups, he has no evidence in order to justify his claims. With no evidence, Limbaugh’s statements become completely editorial and he loses credibility which pushes away audience members who wish to learn more about a subject. Even if the some of the statements were true, readers would not be able to discern the false information from the correct without proper verification. His statements may be a great fear mongering tactic, but he lacks any evidence to support them.
Making these claims, he may reinforce the beliefs his viewers already have, but making such rash arguments could potentially lose any audience member listening to him for the first time. One of Limbaugh’s main claims is towards the idea of how the Earth can regenerate itself, in which he uses in order to state the uselessness of environmental groups. I do agree that the Earth can regenerate itself, however, my belief is the Earth can only regenerate itself to an extent. Limbaugh mentions the Exxon Valdez spill in order to support his topic for Earth will eventually regenerate.
However, he only briefly mentions how much humankind had cleaned up the oil. From the website dedicated to the Exxon Valdez spill, they state that for four months 10,000 orkers, 1,000 boats, and 100 airplanes had worked in order to clean and help animals that were caught by the oil. And even with all that help, “250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 killer whales, and billions of salmon and herring eggs” were killed from the spill.
Supposedly the effects of the oil spill are still in effect (Questions and Answers, 2016). Furthermore, the Earth may be able to degrade some man made products, but degrading the products takes numerous amounts of time. For instance, in 2013 299 illion tons of plastic was produced, which was a four percent increase from the previous year (Gaelle, 2015). Limbaugh states that we are not able to destroy the Earth; unfortunately a piece of plastic can take anywhere from 450 years to 1000 years in order for it to decompose (O’Connor, 2011).
If humans continue to produce plastic at the same rate, the Earth would eventually not be able to keep up. Plastic is not even the worst in decomposition wise; decomposition wise, glass can take a million years in order for it to completely decompose (Bloch, 2013). Later in his article Limbaugh mocks what the environmental groups are promoting and working against. He mentions how they only focus on what mankind has done and completely ignore what the environment has done.
His example is of radon gas that seeps underneath people’s homes and how it is considered highly dangerous (Limbaugh, 1993, p. 442). My belief is the reasoning environmentalist groups focus so much on what mankind has done is because we can control ourselves but we cannot always control the environment. We are able to slow down or halt our own personal consumption or destruction f the earth, it is near impossible to halt the Earth.
For instance, on May 18, 1980, Mt. St. Helens erupted causing mass destruction to the environment surrounding it (Bagley, 2013). There was no method that man could have stopped the eruption, but humankind can always work to stop their own destruction on the environment. I personally have not had any experiences with what Limbaugh describes as “radical environmental groups. ” But I have grown up into a household that believes the Earth can repair itself. Though my household’s beliefs are not as extreme s Limbaugh’s claims, I still took each opinion with a grain of salt.
I agree with the statement that the Earth can eventually heal itself, but I also agree with the stance that some environmental groups have about mankind needing to slow down waste production. There is a limit that mankind will reach and upon reaching that barrier we will have to figure out how to overcome it. That barrier could be mass destruction from a waste. Limbaugh’s excerpt “The Environmental Mindset” includes statements that some can consider rash and over generalization of environmentalist groups as a whole.
His “outburst” of opinions towards environmental groups were an attempt to gather attention and enforce his opinions; however, these claims degenerated his argument and made it difficult for readers to process. With his argument not being structurally intact, Limbaugh makes it difficult for his audience to agree with him. Lack of evidence to support his claims further reinforces the little credibility that Limbaugh has on the subject. Although some of his ideas may have been sound, he did not utilize facts properly to support his opinion and his argument fell into shambles.