Rhetorical Analysis Of The Uninhabitable Earth

“The Uninhabitable Earth” Rhetorical Analysis

In the circulating article from New York Magazine, “The Uninhabitable Earth”, David Wallace-Wells presents nine of many chilling results of climate change in a rare style of writing. He does so by using quantitative evidence in nearly every paragraph and quickly shuffling through facts to aggressively express Earth’s impending doom. This article has been praised and criticized by many because of his extremely pessimistic and debatably over-dramatic predictions of the end of life on Earth. His writing prospers in areas like pathos, but lacks in cogency and ethos, which is his downfall for some readers. Although his writing technique is unique, it is unquestionably thought provoking and pulls at your heartstrings.

The article itself is written in second person, directly accusing the reader and holding them personally responsible for Earth’s impending death.

This technique is so rare and journalists are usually diverted from it, but Wallace-Wells breaks all social norms and decides to point his finger anyway. He writes directly to those already aware of the tragedies of climate change, but still need to be woken up and alarmed of it’s severity. He states, “but no matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough”, making it clear his main motive is not to inform, even though he thoroughly did so, but to frighten and awaken the reader. His attitude, tone, and overall use of pathos is what sets this article apart from others and makes his point effective. His words impact the reader and linger in their minds because of his alarming

approach.
A large factor in the debate over Wallace-Wells’ article is his credibility, or ethos. Wallace-Wells is a journalist who clearly has a passion for economic and environmental collapse, but that is about all we know. His wikipedia page is empty and his google results are extremely sparse. Although we do not know much about his education or reliability, you can find many reviews of this article from qualified scientists and professors who disagree with a lot of Wallace-Wells’ claims. They claim some of his facts are misleading, exaggerated, or even false. Alexis Berg, a research scholar at Princeton University, suggests Wallace-Wells should have wrote with more of a discussion-like tone and included more qualitative evidence for his audience to understand the matter more clearly (Berg). His credibility would have been questioned much less if he had done this and included more context and evidence in an easily understandable way. His use of quantitative data was overdone to the point where it became misleading and inaccurate at times.
Wallace-Wells’ conclusion to the article completely contradicts his tone and diction of the entire piece up to this paragraph. Throughout the whole article he used words like irreversible and impossible, as well as loads of terrifying evidence, to describe the inevitable collapse of life on Earth as we know it. He reversed any chance of persuasion he had before in one sentence: “Now we’ve found a way to engineer our own doomsday, and surely we will find a way to engineer our way out of it, one way or another” (Wallace-Wells). His primary objective to shake up the reader and make them alarmed was completely negated by this calming, reassuring statement that guarantees some way or another, we will survive. This again makes the reader question his ethos and integrity, if the message he seemed so passionate about was so easily contradicted, how credible and passionate was he really?