Blog: How Rhetoric Rocked my World

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Wednesday night I attended the Phoenixville Green Team’s presentation on Transition Towns. I went in without any real knowledge of what a Transition Town is, and was fascinated by the concept.

From the website, the transition town movement is explained as follows:

The Transition Movement is comprised of vibrant, grassroots community initiatives that seek to build community resilience in the face of such challenges as peak oil, climate change and the economic crisis. Transition Initiatives differentiate themselves from other sustainability and "environmental" groups by seeking to mitigate these converging global crises by engaging their communities in home-grown, citizen-led education, action, and multi-stakeholder planning to increase local self reliance and resilience. (Personal note: Why is environmental in “”’s?)

During the presentation, I was struck by two things, and please, neither of these diminishes the very real admiration I feel for everyone doing this kind of work, or my very real interest in learning more about this movement.

First, the dryness of the presentation. Though fascinated by the concept, I did not find the presentation particularly interesting, and actually did not stay to the end. And second, how once again we are not only preaching to the choir, but using words that mainstream Americans either do not understand, or do not respect. Words like sacrifice, crisis, diminishing, global warming, they don’t want to hear it.

We have to stop making this about us, and start making it about the rest of the world. Ninety-nine percent of Americans are not getting it, and we are the problem.

Living in a sustainable manner is not about sacrifice. Finding ways to lessen reliance on fossil fuels is not a hardship. Living sustainably is about job creation. Finding ways to lessen reliance on fossil fuels is patriotic. We know the secret that oil, gas and coal companies are spending millions to hide, renewable energy is the only path to true energy independence. Renewable energy is the only path to peace and prosperity. Renewable energy is the only path to a balanced budget and deficit reduction.

Imagine thousands of us taking this message to the mainstream public.

Let’s start simple, one house. Our house. Take your house off the grid, or simply reduce your reliance on it. Invest in solar, wind, geothermal, whatever you can afford, and if you can’t, find other ways to lessen your fossil fuel use. It really isn’t that hard. I switched our house to electric heat rather than use “natural” gas, yeah I know, technically natural gas is “organic and biodegradable;” it is also toxic and dangerous, and extraction is contaminating our water, so calling it “natural” is just another way to convince you it is “good” for you.

Another way to lessen fossil fuel consumption is to only buy products which are petroleum-free. Bet you didn’t realize that shampoo you use has the “by-products” of fossil fuels. What are by-products? They are what is removed during the refining process. That which is too dirty for your car, is put into shampoo, stain-resistant furniture, carpet, counters, flooring, clothing, toys, plastic and just about every other product we are sold by slick advertising and cheap big box stores.

I created Earth Mart to fight this. Almost nothing in my store contained fossil fuel by-products. And if it did we labeled it, explained why it was there and how it offered other sustainable aspects that made me carry it. We can be smarter consumers. We can use our huge buying power to tell corporations we want smarter and sustainable options. And to do this, we need to be aware of how we are being persuaded to buy certain products, and ideas, with slick advertising, which is really just rhetoric.

What is rhetoric? Well, thanks to Richard Liston and the Sphere College Project, I am learning. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, and despite what we have been brain-washed to believe, rhetoric is not always negative. I have had several realizations that quite literally, have rocked my world. For example, is it counter-productive to use a logical argument against a faith-based belief? And I wonder, is ethos the root of ethical? Because if it is, that might explain a lot.

The thing is once we understand what rhetoric is and how it is used, we can be on alert for it, and then negative rhetoric is less able to persuade us. For example, when my 15-year-old daughter saw a commercial on how “safe” fracking is, she laughed. She gets the absurdity of the claims that anything about a technology that had to be exempt from the Clean Water Act to be legal is worth laughing at, and also disturbing. “How can they just lie like that?” she asked me. “I don’t know," I replied.

Richard had been trying to convince me for months that I was “wasting” my time. That I could be very effective if I would just focus, and understand more about rhetoric. And I am happy to admit, he was right. I get it, and I now understand that one of the biggest obstacles to environmental action has been us, environmental activists. We wanted to force mainstream America to do it on our terms. Guess what, they won’t.

We have to change our thinking. And our dogma. We each get to choose how we live. Period. So we make this about words the rest of the country does understand and care about. Patriotism. National Security. Job creation. Economy. Balanced Budget. Deficit Reduction.

How? Here are a few ideas. First, since the U.S. Marine Corps has come to the realization that transporting fuel to fuel transportation has too high a cost in both dollars and lives, we can take this information and share it with veterans, local military families and local GOP groups. Let’s retrofit a school with solar and wind, cut the energy costs and save taxpayer dollars. When there is no tax increase next year due to the savings, we can point out how this helps balance the budget and reduce deficits.

And we keep hammering this message. We cannot create a sustainable economy based upon diminishing resources on an obsolete grid. Only renewable energy based upon endless resources can create sustainable economy. It really is that simple.