Sandra Steingraber In These Times Despair Not Summary

Turn the Other Cheek
Is climate change real? Are we at fault? Most of us don’t go to bed at night thinking about those questions, but, should we be thinking about those questions? Should we ask ourselves what we are doing to the planet we live on, also, what are we doing to this one body we are given or do we just turn the other cheek and ignore what going on around us? . Should we be blind to all the things going on environmentally, like we did years ago to slavery, or should we stand up and speak out in mass? This is the question that Sandra Steingraber an ecologist, mother, and cancer survivor ask us in her article for an online journal In These Times: Despair Not.
In the Steingraber essay she ties the connection of slavery to the environmental

issues of today and how they will impact our children and grandchildren. She calls us to action to speak out against big oil companies and not be blind to the environmental issues going on around us. Steingraber does a good job through emotional logical and ethical appeals to convey her concern and comparing them to times of slavery and how history handle that issue.
Steingraber primary appeal is emotional, she draws the audience into the essay by connecting slavery with today’s environmental issues this is done well and smoothly by her transition from a story about abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy and the struggles that abolitionist faced to her son and how she will address the environmental issues facing our children with her on prospective.

Steingraber writes “ In the spirit of Elijah Lovejoy---the man who is the namesake of my nine- year-old son the time has come for outspoken, full-throated heroism in the face of the great moral issue of our own day: the environmental crisis an unfolding calamity whose main victims are our own children and grandchildren.” (745) she really grabs the audience attention emotionally by pointing out the fact that our children and grandchildren are the victims she really goes on in this essay with that emotional appeal by making her audience think about question that our children my one day be asking us to answer. Steingraber wonders if our grandchildren one day will ask the question about creatures that no longer exist, as parents and grandparents what our response will be. When our children read books at species that are extinction how will we explain why they disappeared? Those species that have disappeared will our children what too wear costumes as those animals? Or will their troubles be greater than the loss of those loveable species? Though Steingraber emotional appeals are strong in her essay,

she doesn’t just stuck to the emotional side of the issues she brings fact base information into the essay.

Steingraber backs up her claims with an ethical and logical appeal tied together, she argues “chronic childhood diseases linked to toxic chemical exposures are rising in prevalence.” “1 in 10 U.S.

children has a learning disability, and nearly 1 in 10 has attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. [altogether], special education services now consume 22 percent of U.S. school spending–about $77.3 billion per year at last count. Neurodevelopmental disorders have significant associations with exposures to air pollution, organophosphate pesticides like diazinon, and the heavy metals lead, mercury, and arsenic, among others’’(746) She gives the audience statistic stating the trends which shows she has researched the topic in-depth which leads the audience to believe she is trustworthy and knowledge in her field of study, it gives the readers time to processes the emotional appeals by backing them up with fact base information which is a bit scary when the information is broken down into data that show how its affecting children today and how it will effect children later on if we don’t do something about it now. . Streingraber then draws the audience attention to on why they don’t always think about this things before they go to bed at

night.
Streingraber introduces the audience to a new term called “well-informed futility syndrome” Streingraber states that “We feel helpless in the face of our knowledge, and we’re not sure we want to know anything more. The apt term for this is “well-informed futility syndrome.”(747) She goes on by giving the audience the fact based information where this term came from. Striengraber does this to draw attention to the fact that we overlook the issues of environmental and health because our brain could not process all that information and it’s really is doing this to protect us from worrying all the time. Which leads the readers back to the title of her essay Despair not.
Striengraber really get her points across to her readers using the ethos, logos, and pathos appeals, though she relies on the emotional appeals to get that point across to her readers she does a good job of bring in the logical on why our brain works the way it does and the ethical why our children are the way they are. But she also gives readers hope with a call to action don’t turn the other cheek Despair not readers if we all stand up for our children and grandchildren then one day we might not be faced with those hard to answer question.