David Biello’s article is a combination of complex
interactions of discourse on the growing controversy on climate change.
Specifically, Biello’s article is a collection of the current discourse from experts
and organizations on how the growing threat of climate change will affect New
York City and what the city is doing to adapt to these possibilities. Keith
Grant-Davie would consider this text a compound rhetorical situation since it
addresses the exigence of how climate change will affect NYC and the city’s
preparedness for that event, while including information from multiple rhetors
that can be applied to multiple audiences. This text is an example of a
compound rhetorical situation created by Biello using a variety of both
implicit and explicit forms and techniques of intertextuality to create an
intertextual collection representing the case of New York City’s climate crisis.
Biello establishes the exigence of this rhetorical situation
in the first paragraph of the article by describing how New York City has
already faced a disaster that parallels the kind that results from effects of
climate change. He does this by employing Grant-Davie’s sequence of exigence.
He establishes the fact of the 2007 thunderstorm that shut down the subway,
then defines how the thunderstorm did that for the unaware audience. The rest
of his article examines the cause of this event, how climate change can cause
such a disaster and then reports how the city is working to adapt to these changes,
which is the value to the readers.
Biello’s text can be of value to multiple audiences including the
scientific community, New Yorkers, and other city officials. The scientific
community can observe how their research is being portrayed to the public while
also evaluating a text that brings together a variety of scientific research
that may spark further discourse within their community. New Yorkers can help
solve this exigence by learning from this text and urging their city officials
to do more to help NYC adapt to the climate change and incite a change within
their local government. This text also serves as an example to other large
cities as a model for how they can begin to adapt to the threats of global
warming and provide ideas for how to do so. Biello attracts all of these audiences through direct
factual information, concrete sources and examples, and uncomplicated language.
His use of language allows for the text to be applied for multiple audiences.
In this article Biello cites information from 10 different
organizations located in New York City. This highlights Biello’s focus to
express specifically the issues surrounding climate change in New York City.
The fact that Grant-Davie only cites sources local to New York emphasizes this
purpose. He cites these experts using both direct and indirect quotations, two
explicit techniques of intertextual representation. For example, Biello cites
Steven Cohen, the executive director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, who said, “you’re
looking at a city that could have its infrastructure compromised for periods of
time by these climate changes.” This demonstrates Biello’s use of direct
quotation while also highlighting the biggest risk that NYC faces in the wake
of climate change. Biello uses this
intertextual technique to establish himself as an authoritative figure on
climate change by bringing together a variety of credible sources.
Biello
also uses indirect quotation in the second paragraph of the article to site
statistics that are pertinent to the shaping of the rhetorical situation.
Biello states that the New York City Panel on Climate Change predicted a
5-10% increase in precipitation by 2080. This shows how
Bielo uses multiple rhetors in his own text as background to frame the
situation. By citing these sources the reader implies that climate change will
increase the precipitation in NYC and test the infrastructure of the entire
city, which is the biggest danger the city currently faces. Biello uses these
types of intertextual techniques repeatedly in his article as a source of
meaning to be used at face value. This level of intertextuality aids Biello in
giving the most well rounded depiction of the rhetorical situation by citing
multiple authoritative texts to analyze the climate crisis NYC faces.
Biello also addresses a variety of other challenges that the
city must address with the ongoing threat of climate change. He juxtaposes
these threats with progress the city has already made in paragraphs 3 and 4. In
paragraph 3 Biello reports how an expected significant drop in temperature
renders the need for open grates in the subways which in turn increases the
risk of the subway flooding during extreme precipitation. Immediately
following, he reports how the city has already taken other steps forward by
planting thousands of trees, converting a quarter of the city’s taxi fleet to
hybrids, and reserving watershed land. This is an intertextual technique of
drawing a social drama, positioning the threat of climate change with the
city’s progress side by side. Biello does this to show the audience how this
metropolis is not oblivious to the consequences of global warming and that it
is already making positive changes. Biello then continues to cite other efforts
made by New York to combat the onset of climate change. He reports that the
Mayor established the creation of solar empowerment zones to convert areas in
New York with large rooftop acreage to solar power in addition to the
aforementioned efforts are part of PlaNYC. This plan aims to have the city
adapted to the realities of global warming by 2030.
The rhetor continues to build on this social drama in the
third section of this text, presenting the audiences with potential solutions
to problems, but also adding their constraints. For example, Biello addresses
the issues of gas emissions, distributed generation, and building weathering
and their potential solutions, but also adds drawbacks to these solutions. The
purpose of this may be to highlight the controversy on climate change due to
all the possible consequences. However, Biello transitions to the last section
where he positions the information to the reader as the potential for them to
solve the exigence of this rhetorical situation. He reflects the scientific
information to the reader to encourage them to think positively on the changes
the city is making to address the effects of climate change locally. In the last paragraph he mentions the first
draft of PlaNYC is due a more than a year following the publication of his
text, possibly to encourage members of his audience to vote in favor of the
plan, or to encourage community moral for the plan, or for scientists to
research more for this plan. He leaves on this note to leave the audience with
the striking notion that they can help solve this situation.
Sources used in the article:
New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC)
Adam Freed, NYC Office of Long-Term Planning and
Sustainability
MillionTreesNYC
Government and City Officials
Mayor Bloomberg
PlaNYC
A NY Times Report
The New York Academy of Sciences
Steven
Cohen, executive director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University
Electrical
engineer Reza Ghafurian of Consolidated Edison, the city's power utility
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