Here you will find the first research essay that was assigned.
Dylan Ram
Professor Jean-Pierre
Freshman Composition
16/ September/ 2019
Do You Know What Donald Trump Says About Climate Change?
The world around us is beautiful. What do you see when you wake up in the morning? Sun creeping through your window, birds chirping, the smell of fresh air? Well, that would be true if you live in the suburbs, but many of us do not. Waking up in the city is hearing trains running, people yelling outside, no sunlight because all the building block it, and a foul stench of CO2 in the air. We live in a world where everything is changing drastically and the people in charge of protecting us and the planet we call home, are brushing it to the side. Our government is not paying attention and seeing the signs and calling the issue of climate change a “Hoax”. With these four sources, we shall examine the audience, language, tone, and stance used by Republican Party leader Donald Trump over the last few years as to how much he does not see climate change as an issue.
With the Republican Party in mind, we have one person who known for letting people know his opinion on certain issues and that person is none other than our President, Donald Trump. Now the first source we will be looking at is a magazine collection of tweets made by President Trump called, “Incredible Stupid Things that Donald Trump Has Said About Climate Change”. The blog falls under the category of microblogging which Donald Trump has become a master at. This collection of tweets speaks simply regular social media users who follow up on the latest tweets coming from the presidents account daily. It is mainly a way of portraying the use of carefree language on the topic by the President. Climate Change in a nutshell is real. It is something that everyone on this planet is going through. But our President seems to take it as a joke, even back in May of 2012, he tweets, “In the 1920’s people were worried about global cooling–it never happened. Now it’s global warming. Give me a break!”. His tone is seen as he wants to seem like he knows what he’s talking about but also to put a sarcastic twist on his words. And when he ends the tweet with “give me a break”, he’s showing his stance on the topic by referring it to be a joke and finds it on the bottom of his agenda. But his tone changes into a combative one when in July of 2014, he tweets, “The only global warming that people should be concerned with is the global warming caused by nuclear weapons because of our weak U.S. leader”. At the time our President was Barack Obama and based on information that every U.S citizen knows is that Trump does not like Obama and the way he ran this country. He proves this himself by saying “…our weak U.S. leader”. Trump is shying away from the actual problem of global warming and using it to try and place blame on someone he does not like. The tone and language in Trumps tweets are very contradicting for he does not address the actual issue of climate change, but he is talking like he wants to prove he can do better without taking any real action.
When you think about the Trump Administration, it is comprised of Republicans that will share the same ideas he has. Around the world, many countries do not agree with the U.S. The second source is “The COP21 Negotiations: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”, which is a collection of negotiations where different nations met to discuss the issue of climate change, but the Republican Party of the United States was not present. Written by Joanna Diana Caytas, she brings to light this very big issue and what the world governments plan on doing. The audience of this conference are representatives from 195 countries that are coming together to hear the plan to save the planet from a drastic change. The stance taken is that even though so many countries agreed, one big contender that needs to be there was the United States. The Republican Party of the U.S. was not well interested in the matter for their main focus was to “eradicate the work of the prior administrations” (8). The language behind this is that the last administration was Obamas and they are saying that they could have done things better which is not attacking but also not giving enough credit. But this also says that the Republican Party and Trump are not focused and are worrying about things that aren’t important at this point in time. The tone of Caytas is that of disappointment in the U.S. With all these rash decisions being made, people are looking down on the Trump administration by saying, “most of the Trump legacy will equally be rescinded by future administrations, a pernicious form of domnatio memoriae (elimination of remembrance).” With this, the tone of the President is that of someone who is ready for new change and someone who wants to forget anything that has to do with the past administrations. Caytas piece on the Negotiations prove that Donald Trump’s administration uses language about climate change in a negative way to try and bash their predecessors to make themselves look good but, do not even address the real issue.
The 3rd source we will be looking at is an article called “Donald Trump Called Climate Change a Hoax. Now He’s Awkwardly Boasting About Fighting It”. Published by Justin Worland, it is a reading about how our president in recent months have said contradicting things on the issue of climate change. The audience is the general public who read Time.com articles especially those who look for articles that portray or bring to light the fact that our President is very contradicting. The tone is informative where examples and explanations are given on the past and present dialogue of the president. He frequently makes claims on the topic, but then evidence come to light that make his claim very inadequate. “But one claim stood out as particularly surprising: Trump specifically cited a reduction in climate change-causing carbon dioxide emissions and bragged that the U.S. has exceeded other countries in nixing greenhouse gas emissions. “Every single one of the signatories to the Paris climate accord lags behind America,” he said. That claim is misleading: emissions rose in the U.S. last year and Trump’s policies are likely to make future reductions less likely” (Worland). The tone of president Trump is that of someone who is making a speech then drops the microphone at the end. But this isn’t the case because his claim of reducing emissions in the U.S. already is invalid because in the last year emission rose. Also, the signatories of the Paris Agreement are all on the same page and would like the President to join but he keeps on attacking what they’re trying to do, making him seem like the real idiot in this whole situation. But according to Worland, President Trump talks like a person who thinks they know what the answers are, but they are not. “His remarks Monday were also filled with a series of false or misleading statements. He claimed that the Green New Deal would cost the economy $100 trillion, when in fact the Green New Deal is merely a resolution, meaning it lacks specifics that would allow economists to determine what it costs. He said that ensuring clean air is a “top priority” for his administration while the Environmental Protection Agency has changed air pollution rules in a fashion that will lead to more deaths”(Worland).The language of Worland is very professional as he is trying to say that trump does not know what he is talking about. Trump is a businessman who cares about money but him stating the Green New Deal will have actual cost contradicts the fact that there aren’t any specific factors that help estimate a cost. But if the conversation was immigration then Trump would have done his homework on the matter. Worland’s article supports the claim that President Trump does not see climate change as an issue, but also signifies he’s more interested in other issues that are on his mind because of his language.
Finally, our last source, “Trump to Revoke California’s Authority to Set Stricter Auto Emissions Rules” is a New York Times article about California’s own plan to combat climate change and president Trump and his administration fully denying it. Written by Coral Davenport, it is meant to address the audience of newspaper readers to inform them about political events happening all around the country. In this article, the tone is very professional in a sense that she uses formal language on the topic to express her details and analysis of the specific topic of climate change in our country. The language spoken throughout this paper is not all directly coming from Donald Trump, but from people whose jobs are to analyze his actions as president, and they present information that helps supports our initial claim. Using his famous twitter account, president Trump said, “the Trump administration is revoking California’s Federal Waiver on emissions in order to produce far less expensive cars for the consumer, while at the same time making the cars substantially SAFER” (Davenport). The tone and language of this tweet are similar because they both are connected to facts that president Trump wants to not accept this plan in order to save money. Like we all know, our president is a businessman and “the outcome could split the United States auto market, with some states adhering to stricter pollution standards than others. For automakers, that would be a nightmare” (Davenport). Language is tricky here because the purpose is not fully clear, but it does connect back to the fact that even though Trump will talk and talk about how he can change, it will not help in the long run when the world is at risk. But, not only is Trump hurting the environment, but he has people supporting him. His administration have been just as guilty as he is when Davenport says, “As a result, the White House decided to proceed with just one piece of its plan — the move to strip California of its authority to set tougher standards — while delaying its wider strategy, according to these people.” You can sense the anger but professionalism of Davenport because she feels the backlash of Trump taking away California’s right to choose, but the anger is mainly contained as she refers the White House administrators as “these people”. With this, the text is seen as a newspaper article but also could be seen as an argumentative essay on Davenports part due to her small adjustments of language throughout her writing. Lastly, Davenports article supports our initial claim of Trumps language against climate change along with others of the White House Administration and also proves that the words used are a symbol of his lack of care for the issue.
In conclusion, all the source is very different in medium and genre but show similar style in the context and value of what each author has to say on the issue. The authors Each has their own way of speaking on the matter, all show pure professionalism, but also throw in their own opinions with some good writing. They write with the same idea of supporting our claim that Donald Trump language, tone, stance and audience on the issue of climate change shows his lack of care for this sensitive problem the whole world is facing. But it needs to be addressed properly because if not, our President may have a whole new set of issues to worry about.
Work Cited Page
Website:
Jones, Boogie. “Smoking Gun: Incredibly Stupid Things Donald Trump Has Said About Climate Change.” Progressive.org, 1 Dec. 2018, https://progressive.org/magazine/on-the-line-a-bright-redd-line/.
Scholarly Article:
Caytas, Joanna Diane. “The COP21 Negotiations: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.” Consilience, no. 19, 2018, pp. 1–16. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26427709.
Scholarly Article
Worland, Justin. “Donald Trump Called Climate Change a Hoax. Now He’s Awkwardly Boasting About Fighting It.” Time.Com, July 2019, p. N.PAG. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=137396607&site=ehost-live.
Newspaper Article
Davenport, Coral. “Trump to Revoke California’s Authority to Set Stricter Auto Emissions Rules.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Sept. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/climate/trump-california-emissions-waiver.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/climate&action=click&contentCollection=climate®ion&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront.
