#8

I am put in an interesting position by the blog assignment, on the last blog we found a nonprofit that supported the climate issue I was going to discuss in my paper, on this one it’s the opposite. The issue with this is that my topic is “Oil Spills,” not really a controversial issue. I looked, nobody’s arguing the benefits of oil spills let alone a nonprofit. Instead of looking into a non-profit that’s against oil spills I will look into another group that’s against oil spills. Since I already looked into non-profits I decided to look into another nonprofit group and see what sets them apart from some of the groups that I looked at last week, hopefully they make a different point then the last nonprofit I looked into to get a second perspective. The nonprofit that I’m looking into is called The Harte Research Organization and is connected to Texas A&M university which is new compared to the last nonprofit that acted independently instead of being connected/backed by a powerful and well founded organization. After looking into their “About Me” page I discovered that they look into anything regarding the protection of the gulf of mexico, fortunately(?) one of the largest and well known oil spills occured in the gulf of mexico. In one of the articles they wrote on the gulf oil spill they surprisingly stayed away from pathos, you know turtles dying in oil and such, and relied heavily on appeals to logos, logic and ethos, ethics. Instead of guilting people into providing support (mostly through financial support) they actually told and explained to their audience what was going on and how the oil spill affected the gulf ecosystem. As for ethics they make the argument that an individual a responsibility to the environment specifically when it comes to climate change.

Link to article mentioned.

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