oh, to have had a lovely weekend

does progress count?
what do we consider to be progress anyway?
whenever we humans claim to have made progress more problems sprout up like in a leaky boat. progress, really, is just dependent upon one's perspective no matter how open or narrow it might be. i am determined to complete my thought with this essay. i have many thoughts tho. just for the sake of documentation, i'll post some of my more put together work. bon soir.


The Essay so far

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has elicited strong responses from both its supporters and its detractors. The ESA is a federal law, passed in 1973, which “bans the hunting or killing of endangered species and protects against significant habitat loss” (Salzman 277). It was born out of earlier attempts by the U.S. government and its citizens to preserve wildlife, plant species, and habitat. The idea behind the law was to establish an institutional, wide ranging means for wildlife conservation, which grew out of a growing national consciousness of the beauty, usefulness, and preciousness of the natural world which prompted the creation of this unique and influential law.

Long have arguments been made, throughout the history of the U.S., supporting the preservation of wildlife which have regularly butted up against the interests of other individuals, governments, and industries that revere property rights (as supported by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution), industrial progress and business profits. These arguments have been brought to public attention more recently through the Bush Administration’s attempts at weakening the ESA and other environmental laws and Congress’ role in facilitating that.

The House of Representatives passed what has come to be known as the Pombo Bill named after its author Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) on September 29, 2005. Critics of the bill are many and include biologists, wildlife and environmental groups, and members of Congress including members of Pombo’s own Republican Party such as Rep. Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI). Opposition voices to the bill speak of the revisions as being detrimental to the environment and wildlife. Kieran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) has said that the revisions “systematically strip all of the recovery tools from the Act” (Jim Motavalli e-Magazine.co m). This House bill “calls for the elimination of habitat protection for endangered species, weakens oversight of federal agency actions and undermines the use of sound science in decision-making about imperiled wildlife. It would also require taxpayers to pay developers not to kill endangered species” (Defenders of Wildlife web article).

But there are supporters of the bill within the House and Senate, and among hunters, farmers and property rights activists. Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) spoke about his bill in a written statement saying that “Upholding this right (property rights as described in the Fifth Amendment) and partnering with the landowner is the only way we are going to improve the Endangered Species Act’s failing results for recovery…This legislation does just that” (redorbit.com/news/science/ 256999/pombos_bill_clears_house_hurd le/ & Denis Cuff, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif.).

Rhetorical situations are invaluable and inevitable realities. It is through these fleeting confluences of events which create the impetus, the necessity for rhetorical response. Lloyd Bitzer argued that
“human relations operate[d] in the context of rhetorical situations governed by exigencies, that is, social, political, economic, and ethical urgencies that invited discursive responses. Rhetoric occurs[red] when a speaker responded to the perception of exigency by addressing an audience that could be persuaded to make changes that would modify the urgency” ( ).

These moments of inspiration are ever present in the universe and within our own personal sphere of interactions. Just as rhetorical situations exist in the air so to does rhetoric. It is through rhetoric that we humans are able to make sense of, and interact with, each other and our environment. When we consider these contexts when analyzing two opposing arguments it helps us understand the influence of, and the purpose of, the rhetoric being utilized.

It is my objective to shed some light on the role of rhetoric in the contentious arguments in recent debates about the Endangered Species Act (ESA). When the ESA was up for renewal in Congress in 2005 a controversial bill was passed that year, which spread concern throughout the scientific, wildlife preservation and environmental communities that the Senate’s bill would lead to a much weakened version of the ESA. For my purposes, I have chosen two documents that present two different opinions about the success of the ESA at conserving endangered species. It is my contention that it is through rhetorical situations that rhetoric is given the fuel for action/life and that each rhetorical situation dictates a course for a particular rhetorical response.

Each document has its genesis in the form of a direct response to congressional bills, one passed in the House, and the other up for a vote in the Senate. The exigencies are one and the same here with the actions of the Senate being top-most on the minds of the authors. Will the Senate pass a bill that would complement the one passed earlier in the House? Perhaps, the Senate would pass a bill that would be at odds with the House’s bill? Just the same, the Senate could decide not to take any formal action and the issue, for the moment, anyway, could die. With any one of these scenarios being equally plausible why have the authors of these documents chosen to write? Why have they made their particular rhetorical choices? One argument is made in support of the ESA while the other argues that the ESA is a failure. Which, of any, argument is more successful, and why? In order to answer these questions let us evaluate these two documents.

It is inevitable that science and politics will intermingle – each laying some claim as the true important factor in the improvement of the lives of the citizens. Both are rife with rhetorical displays and both depend on rhetoric for their sustenance and survival. The arguments made in the first document entitled A Letter from Biologists to the United States Senate Concerning Science in the Endangered Species Act had the weight of the biological science community lauding the Endangered Species Act for its importance in conserving endangered species, its success dependent upon its ‘solid foundation in science.’ Through the course of the history of the ESA a premium has been placed on the word and the work of the science community to best serve the intentions of the ESA. The opposition viewpoint, as characterized by Peyton Knight, the director of environmental and regulatory affairs for the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. ( ), is that the ESA is a failure. His article, entitled The “Collaboration for the Recovery of Endangered Species Act”: An Analysis of the Senate Proposal to Reform the Endangered Species Act, argues that the senate’s revision of the ESA is not good, yet he does not approve of the ESA as presently constituted either.

For the biologists, they reacted to the exigency provided by the House when they passed the Pombo Bill. In this context, the scientists felt that a threat to the ESA, and implicitly, then, to wildlife had come to the fore. The degradation of the science, as rendered in the Pombo Bill, involved with the research, proliferation of information, administrative tasks, and execution of duties might even prove detrimental to the employment potential of scientists, though this is in no way implied through the writings of these scientists. It makes the role of rhetoric that of facilitator when it is applied to achieving the ends implied by the rhetorical situation.

From the beginning, the authors and signatories of the biologists’ letter had made it obvious that they were going to get their message out through the use of ethos. The best rhetorical weapon they could have when addressing a scientific issue to politicians would be to portray themselves as experts, and through creating this ethos, a voice of authority, it becomes a undeniably powerful form of persuasion. They include at the outset five different quotes from scientists commenting on why the ESA is important, why it should be protected. Comments such as:


Scientists know we must protect
species because they are working
parts of our life-support system.
Paul Ehrlich, Entomologist, Population Biologist
Bing Professor of Population Studies and president,
Center for Conservation Biology, Stanford University,
California; member, National Academy of Sciences;
MacArthur Fellow; and Crafoord Prize winner in
Bioscience

To weaken the scientific foundation of the Endangered
Species Act is to doom more species to extinction.
Walter V. Reid, Ecologist
Consulting professor, Institute for the Environment,
Stanford University, California; former director,
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment; and past board
member, Society for Conservation Biology

are strong rhetoric meant to set the tone for the entire letter and serve as expert advice for senators who might not understand the significance of wildlife conservation.

This rhetorical device is continued farther down the letter into what I might consider a banner, which states that this is “A Letter from 5,738 Biologists to the United States Senate Concerning Science in the Endangered Species Act.” Again, the writer(s) of this letter are not being subtle in their attempts to draw attention to the sheer volume of scientific experts who are supporting the ESA.

By choosing a strong character to voice the concerns of

....and something like that