Rhetorical Analysis of Garth Lenz's The True Cost of Oil

Rhetorical Analysis of Garth Lenz’s: The True Cost of Oil Many people are unaware of the devastating destruction that the Alberta Tar Sands are causing on Canada’s ecosystem and the lifestyle of the native peoples of the Athabasca. The Alberta Tar Sands are large deposits of crude oil, also known as bitumen. The Athabasca deposit is the largest known reservoir of crude bitumen in the world. The Alberta Tar Sands are unique in the fact that it is the only oil reserve that is suitable for surface mining. That being said, the Alberta Tar Sands are causing irrevocable damage to Canada’s fragile eco system. Photographer Garth Lenz has been capturing threatened wilderness regions, devastation, and the impacts on indigenous peoples, for the past twenty years. He has appeared in the world’s leading publications, and is a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers which is a charitable organization whose aim is to further environmental and cultural conservation through communication enterprises. Lenz gave a TED-Talk speech in November of 2011 titled the True Cost of Oil. As Lenz demonstrates through his emotional and shocking pictures of the Canadian landscape, the environmental devastation that this oil mining is causing to the ecosystem as well as the indigenous people of the land is irreversible and unprecedented. Lenz’s techniques thoroughly convince the audience that the tar mining in Canada is devastating to both the Canadian people and to Canada’s natural ecosystem and landscape. In order to support his claim, Lenz uses a variety of rhetorical devices to capture the audience’s attention. The speaker first uses vivid imagery to draw in the audience with claims such as “The worlds largest most devastating environmental industrial project is located in the heart of the largest and most intact forest in the world-Canada’s Boreal Forrest . . . home to the largest remaining wild caribou heard in the world, the George River herd with