Jacqueline Mendez Mendez 1

Prof. Rasheedah
Eng 112
March 27
th
2014
Rhetorical Analysis
Al Gores speech, Averting the Climate Crisis was given at a ted talk meeting, and
focuses on what citizens can do to help the current global climate crisis. He has established his
credibility on the topic throughout these past few years as an environmental advocate with the
help of the release of his documentary The Inconvenient Truth. Using ethos, pathos, and logos
to communicate, and stress his point to inform his audience Gore successfully delivered a 15 step
call to action to anyone who listened to his speech throughout his time on stage.
Gore begins his speech by lightening the mood. He tells a couple humorous stories which
capture the attention of the audience, and begins forming connections. He does this by describing
his normal day with his wife, We were driving ourselves he says a few times. In doing this
Gore is personalizing himself with the audience in order to win their concerns as the speech
progresses. While doing this Gore maintains his authority and credibility by adding comments
which separate him from the blue collar worker, and remind the audience that he was once the
Vice President of the United States, and he knows what hes talking about. He mentions a trip to
Kenya to give a speech about energy, and being good friend, partner and colleague with Bill
Clinton.
Once hes finished with the funny introduction, he begins to state his main point: to give
citizens steps to help stop global warming. He then continues to educate his audience on updated
statistics which are correlated to global warming using a prepared slide show. Gores visual aids
Mendez 2
compare the temperature with the historical average, and the US emissions produced from
everything. He cleverly graphed on the same chart the emissions that would be produced if we
all switched to more efficient transportations and appliances, this showed a great decline in
emissions produced and Gore uses this to urge audience members to take the stops to simply
switch to more efficient cars and appliances.
After the comparison, Gore proceeds with his 15 steps. Each step that is listed is written
simply and is relatively straight forward. For most of the steps Gore lists, he provides examples
and elaborates on their meaning, as well as their effect on the planet. By doing this he clarifies
any question that could be raised, and credits himself further with the extensive knowledge of his
topic. He is appealing to the logic of the audience using facts and simple ideas one could
consider for becoming more energy efficient at home, work and transportation methods. He then
reaches out to the audience for help with branding, and rebranding, another way of helping
promote global warming.
Gores 15 steps are full of call to action towards the audience and himself. He has
proceeded to invite the audience to join him in a class he is teaching about public peaking and
the promotion of global climate crisis. Gore has now broken the wall between himself and the
audience as a way of earning trust and inspiring action to be taken towards his goals. His side
notes about the steps he presents have either a logical appeal if they are a fact, or statistics, and
may also contain an emotional appeal to his audience. This may be cause due to his tone of
urgency and excitement.
Gore provides the audience with a link which contains a carbon calculator. This
calculator is said to give an accurate estimation on how much carbon emissions are being
released from a certain home. By giving his audience members tools and resources that can be
discovered outside of the auditorium, Gore has planned to try and spark further action by
inspiring research to be undergone by his audience. This is a good idea because the information
found by his audience later, will most likely be shared to others and then those individuals will
do the same causing a chain reaction and the spread of knowledge.
Promoting the issue is something that Gore talks about a few times throughout his
speech. He stresses that his audience educates those who do not know how to help the climate
crisis, or dont know much about it.