Theme Two: Science and the Environment
Reading skill: Learning to do annotation
1. Read the following paragraphs and pay attention to how the paragraphs are annotated.
Paragraph 1
In the meantime, green groups are pressuring electronics
manufacturers to take responsibility for the afterlife of their
Annotation
An effective strategy: pushing
E-manufacturers to look after
the afterlife of their products.
products. The strategy is working. By reducing toxic metals like
mercury and using fewer small pieces of aluminum and glass,
companies like Apple now design their laptops to be more easily
recycled. Sony has pledged to work only with recyclers that
pledge not to export e-waste. And Dell, which since 2004 has
offered free recycling for its products (customers arrange
shipping online), recently announced an in-store recycling
program with Staples. To confirm that its recyclers are really
recycling, Dell uses environmental-audit firms to check up on its
partners. The electronics manufacturers have started to assume
their corporate responsibility by finding solutions to possible E-
Evidence of effectiveness of the
strategy:
Apple: design easily recyclable
laptops.
Sony: only work with recyclers
that do not export e-waste.
Dell: a) free recycling since
2004
b) recent in-store recycling
program
c) check on its partners
recycling efforts
Conclusion: companies
assumed corporate
responsibility for E-waste.
waste of their products.
Walsh, B. (Jan 8th, 2009). E-Waste Not. Retrieved May 10, 2010 from
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1870485,00.html
An explanatory note: The earlier reading skill-understanding a text through identifying its organizational
structure is also useful in helping you annotate a text. The above paragraph is an expository paragraph
starting with a statement that a particular strategy used by green groups to push electronics
manufacturers is working. The writer follows up supporting this main idea by giving evidence of what
some well-known e-manufacturers have done for recycling and reducing e-waste, concluding that the
companies have started to assume corporate responsibilities
2. Read paragraph 2. What is the pattern of paragraph organization here? How does identifying the
organizational pattern help you annotate the text?
Paragraph 2
Annotation
The Formation of Oil
Oil is usually called petroleum. Petroleum is very complex, but it is Oil=Petroleum (Contains 2 Elements)
1) carbon
made up of only two elements: carbon (C) and hydrogen (H).
hydrocarbons
2) hydrogen
Together carbon and hydrogen are called hydrocarbons.
remains of ancient plants and animals
Hydrocarbons are the remains of ancient plants and animals. These
plants and animals lived and died millions of years ago. When they lived and died millions of years ago
died, they were covered by mud, and bacteria broke down the organic remains. Over thousands of years, more plants and animals
died and were covered by more mud. The weight of the upper
covered by mud and broken down into
organic remains
more died and covered by mud over time
layers and the heat from the pressure eventually changed the mud
into solid rock, called sedimentary rock. It also changed the organic
material into oil and natural gas.
Taken from: Smith, L.C. and Mare, N.N. (1999). Insights for
Today: A High Beginning Reading Skills Text (ed. 2). p 211.
Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
weight from upper layers & heat from
pressure
a) changed the mud into solid rock
b) changed the organic remains into oil
and gas
3. Read Paragraph 3. Is it a paragraph with a different pattern of organization? Observe how the
annotations are done.
Paragraph 3
Another surprising thing about the rain forests is that their land is
not fit for agriculture. Although many people thought that land that
can support these huge, thick forests must be very rich in nutrients,
the actual fact is that most of the land in tropical rain forests is very
poor. The plants are able to live because of all the dead leaves and
other plant parts that fall to the ground. This carpet of dead plants
Annotation
Land for rain forests is not fit for
agriculture.
Reason: Land is poor
Explanation of causes: Nutrients come
from dead leaves and plants –no more
when forests are cleared --no source of
nutrients for living plants.
provides nutrients for the living plants. When the land is cleared for
agriculture, there are no longer any plants left to die and provide
nutrients for living plants. The cycle is broken. Agriculture is
Conclusion: Agriculture is unsuccessful
as land cannot support it.
unsuccessful because the land cannot support it.
Adapted from Ackert, P. (1999). Cause & Effect: Intermediate
Reading Practice (ed. 3). p 98 – 100. Boston: Heinle & Heinle
Publishers.
For additional practices on annotating a paragraph, click here.
Annotation
Text
Saving Nature, But Only for Man
Environmental sensitivity is now as required an attitude in Problem of selection with regard to
polite society as is, say, belief in democracy or aversion to environmental protection
polyester. But now that everyone from Ted Turner to George
Bush, Dow to Exxon has professed love for Mother Earth, how
are we to choose among the dozens of conflicting proposals,
restrictions, projects, regulations and laws advanced in the name
of the environment? Clearly not everything with an
environmental claim is worth doing. How to choose?
There is a simple way. First, distinguish between
environmental luxuries and environmental necessities. Luxuries
are those things it would be nice to have if costless. Necessities
are those things we must have regardless. Then apply a rule. Call
it the fundamental axiom of sane environmentalism: Combatting
ecological change that directly threatens the health and safety of
people is an environmental necessity. All else is luxury.
Solution proposed:
Distinguish environmental luxuries v.s.
For example: preserving the atmosphere – stopping ozone
depletion and the greenhouse effect – is an environmental
necessity. In April scientists reported that ozone damage is far
worse than previously thought. Ozone depletion not only causes
skin cancer and eye cataracts, it also destroys plankton, the
beginning of the food chain atop which we humans sit.
Example of environmental necessity
stopping ozone depletion and the
greenhouse effect
Reason: Direct harm to human health
Fundamental threat to the
food chain
environmental necessities
Address environmental necessities
The reality of the greenhouse effect is more speculative, Deadly consequences of greenhouse
though its possible consequences are far deadlier: melting ice effect: changing climate, natural
caps, flood coastlines, disrupted climate, parched plains and, disasters, food shortage
ultimately, empty breadbaskets. The American Midwest feeds the
world. Are we prepared to see Iowa acquire New Mexico’s
desert climate? And Siberia acquire Iowa’s?
Ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect are human
disasters. They happen to occur in the environment. But they are
urgent because they directly threaten man. A sane
environmentalism, the only kind of environmentalism that will
win universal public support, begins by unashamedly declaring
that nature is here to serve man. A sane environmentalism is
entirely anthropocentric: it enjoins man to preserve nature, but
on the grounds of self-preservation.
Urgency in addressing Ozone depletion
and the greenhouse effect: direct threat
to man
Writer’s proposal: anthropocentrism=A
sane environmentalism= Preserving
nature for man
A sane environmentalism does not sentimentalize the earth. Writer’s idea on what a sane
It does not ask people to sacrifice in the name of other creatures. environmentalism does not do: 1) it does
After all, it is hard enough to ask people to sacrifice in the name not sentimentalize the earth. 2) It does
of other humans. (Think of the chronic public resistance to not ask human to sacrifice themselves for
foreign aid and welfare.) Ask hardworking voters to sacrifice in other creatures.
the name of the snail darter, and, if they are feeling polite, they
will give you a shrug.
Of course, this anthropocentrism runs against the grain of a
contemporary environmentalism that indulges in earth worship
to the point of idolatry. One scientific theory – Gaia theory –
actually claims that Earth is a living organism. This kind of
environmentalism likes to consider itself spiritual. It is nothing
more than sentimental. It takes, for example, a highly selective
view of the benignity of nature. My nature worship stops with
the April twister that came through Kansas or the May cyclone
that killed more than 125,000 Bengalis and left 10 million (!)
homeless.
A nonsentimental environmentalism is one founded on
Protagoras’ maxim that “Man is the measure of all things.” Such
a principle helps us through the thicket of environmental
argument. Take the current debate raging over oil drilling in a
corner of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
Environmentalists, mobilizing against a bill working its way
through the U.S. Congress to permit such exploration, argue that
Americans should be conserving energy instead of drilling for it.
This is a false either/or proposition. The U.S. does need a sizable
energy tax to reduce consumption. But it needs more production
too. Government estimates indicate a nearly fifty-fifty chance
that under the ANWR lies one of the five largest oil fields ever
discovered in America.
The U.S. has just come through a war fought in part over
oil. Energy dependence costs Americans not just dollars but
lives. It is a bizarre sentimentalism that would deny oil that is
peacefully attainable because it risks disrupting the calving
grounds of Arctic caribou.
Anthropocentrism
v.s.
contemporary environmentalism:
Earth worship-sentimental
Example: Gaia theory
Writer’s view: No nature worship as
natural disasters are threatening human
life.
A nonsentimental environmentalism=
Man over nature stance
Example: the debate over oil drilling in
Alaska
Author’s stand: energy dependence costs
lives—urgent problem to solve –against
sentimentalism that keeps from getting
peacefully attainable oil to avoid
disruption to an animal’s breeding
ground .
I like the caribou as much as the next man. And I would be
rather sorry if their mating patterns are disturbed. But you can’t Author’s stand: Urgency of human life
have everything. And if the choice is between the welfare of over the welfare of animals
caribou and reducing an oil dependency that gets people killed in
wars, I choose man over caribou every time.
Similarly the spotted owl in Oregon. I am no enemy of the
owl. If it could be preserved at no or little cost, I would agree:
the variety of nature is a good, a high aesthetic good. But it is no
more than that. And sometimes aesthetic goods have to be
Author’s stand: fundamental needs over
something aesthetically good.
Example: protection of the livelihood of
30000 logging families over the
preservation of spotted owls.
sacrificed to the more fundamental ones. If the cost of preserving
the spotted owl is the loss of livelihood for 30,000 logging
families, I choose family over owl.
The important distinction is between those environmental Author’s claim: Man’s well-being over
goods that are fundamental and those that are merely aesthetic. that of nature
Nature is our ward. It is not our master. It is to be respected and
even cultivated. But it is man’s world. And when man has to
choose between his well-being and that of nature, nature will
have to accommodate.
Man should accommodate only when his fate and that of
nature are inextricably bound up. The most urgent
accommodation must be made when the very integrity of man’s
habitat – e.g., atmospheric ozone – is threatened. When the threat
to man is of a lesser order (say, the pollutants from coal- and oilfired generators that cause death from disease but not fatal
damage to the ecosystem), a more modulated accommodation
that balances economic against health concerns is in order. But in
either case the principle is the same: protect the environment –
because it is man’s environment.
The principle: Protect the environment
for men.
Man should only accommodate nature
when his very existence is threatened.
The sentimental environmentalists will call this saving
nature with a totally wrong frame of mind. Exactly. A sane – a
humanistic – environmentalism does it not for nature’s sake but
for our own.
Ending: reinforcing the stand to protect
nature for the sake of men.
Adapted from LaGuardia, D.; Guth, H. P. (2000). American Voices:
Culture & Community ( 4th ed.). Mayfield Publishing Company.