ARGUMENT 7 选新市长解决环保问题

TOPIC: ARGUMENT7 - The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Clearview newspaper.

"In the next mayoral election, residents of Clearview should vote for Ann Green, who is a member of the Good Earth Coalition, rather than for Frank Braun, a member of the Clearview town council, because the current members are not protecting our environment. For example, during the past year the number of factories in Clearview has doubled, air pollution levels have increased, and the local hospital has treated 25 percent more patients with respiratory illnesses. If we elect Ann Green, the environmental problems in Clearview will certainly be solved."

WORDS: 481 TIME: 00:40:00 DATE: 2011-4-10 0:19:42

In this argument, the author concludes that residents of Clearview should vote for Ann Green who is a member of the Good Earth Coalition to solve the environmental problems in Clearview. At first glance, this argument seems to be convincing, but further reflection reveals that these evidences neither constitute a logical statement in support of its conclusion nor providing compelling support making this argument sound and invulnerable.

The threshold problem with this argument is that the author assumes that the current members of the Clearview town council are not protecting the environment. Although this is entirely possible, the argument lacks evidence to confirm this assumption. For example, the increase number of factories will not definitely lead to the pollution of the environment if some measures have been taken. The air pollution maybe brought by the neighboring city. More patients with respiratory illnesses can not attribute to the air pollution. Until the author provides further evidence to exclude all these concerns, it is unfounded to reach the conclusion involved in the argument.

The second flaw that weakens the logic of this argument is that the author assumes that Frank is not concerned about and should be responsible for the environment problems. Nevertheless , there is no guarantee that it is necessarily case and it is quite possible that Frank is vary concerned about the environment and the real causes of the environment problem are other people such as some businessman who want to make money through opening a lot of factory. In short, without better evidence ruling out these and other alternative explanations, it is reasonable to cast considerable doubt on this assumption.

The last but not the least important, even if the author can substantiate all of the foregoing assumptions, his assumption that all the problems will be solved with the election of Ann Green as mayor of the city is totally unfounded because just concerning about the environment is not enough. If they want to solve the environment problems, a lot of work has to be done. It is much more possible that Ann Green doesn’t have the time and ability to lead the government to solve the environment problems although he concern about the environment because the responsibility of a mayor is not only regarding environmental protecting but also other fairs. Only by the work of all the people in Clearview can they hope to solve the problems. The new Mayor has to come up a blueprint of the benefit of protecting the environment and lead his residents of Clearview to work together. This is a long process and if it failed, the environment problems can’t be solved.

To sum up, the conclusion lacks credibility because the evidence cited in the analysis does not lend strong support to what the arguer maintains. Therefore, if the author had considered the given factors discussed above, the argument would have been more through and logically acceptable.