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Writers in both Ecology and Environmental Justice use persuasive speech to persuade the reader that how they view human interaction with nature is a reflection of the real world we live in. They specifically use certain words that incite certain ideas, creating a path wherein the reader can arrive at a conclusion assumably by themselves. This either helps pave a path for the writer to persuade or it further drives the point home. An example of this in an ecology writing called The Clan of One-Breasted Women, Tempest Williams (1991, p. 282) uses the word “clan” to communicate how natural he thought the breast cancer was, before he, and the reader, found out what actually caused it. He prepares a path for the reader to understand that what we may think to be natural and outside of human influence could have been influenced by humans.

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Just in August of 1945, one month after the first bombing, 35 infants died as a result of The Manhattan Project's Trinity test (Little, 2024). The nuclear bomb testing was what caused the breast cancer in Tempest Williams’ “Clan of One-breasted Women.” In 1945 New Mexico, J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project scientists started testing bombs. They tested these bombs without warning the half a million people, “many of them Hispanos and Native Americans,” that were living “only 12 miles away” from the testing site (Little, 2024). Like the father in “Clan of One-breasted Women,” many of the inhabitants of the community saw and felt the explosion. There were children that “played in falling white debris like it was snow, catching it on their tongues and rubbing it on their faces” (Little, 2024). Not only did the people not know what had happened, they weren’t aware how that would affect them and their families for what may seem like forever.

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Persuasive speech is also used in the form of imagery. In Woven Stone, Ortiz (1992. p. 339) creates a very specific image using poetry style of writing. He describes parks and tours in a way that makes the reader question their perception of parks as natural spaces. He uses parks to critique America’s destructive colonial past and build a foundation for an instrumental picture of his argument. He uses the words “monuments” “ruins” and “antiquity” to communicate how America sees the community of Native Americans that were forced to leave these places or died. It paints a picture, not only of the “ruins” in place, but also the injustice the community suffered. Their homes are now well-kept “ruins.”

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Violence and injustice against Native Americans and their lands are traceable throughout American history. European settlers dislocated them from their land with the help of the colonial government in the 17th century. Efforts to take Indigenous land increased in the 19th century with policies such as the Indian Removal Act (1830) and Dawes General Allotment act (1887) passed by congress. This has led to a mass displacement and forced migration of Native Americans. This has led to them losing aspects of their culture that can never be recovered. The dislocation of Native Americans not only affected where they lived, but how they lived.

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What ecology and environmental justice writers try to do is appeal to the emotions of the reader. We can see this in the choice of words they use, but we can also see this in how they sequence their narratives. When Williams (1991, p. 283) writes, “I stared at my father,” the reader felt the same terrible shock that comes with an unsettling realization. The choice to let the reader find out what had caused this horrible suffering that had afflicted his family for generations was to appeal to our emotions. When we found out that the bombing caused the breast cancer, we also found out how human action can cause terrible reactions that seem incredibly natural. This appeal to emotions is also seen in Woven Stone, when Ortiz (1992, p. 338-339) reveals the past and present reality of certain spaces, like when he tells a story of his people’s “long and difficult” journey from the northwest to park that holds tours with friendly staff and a clean bathroom.

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Preservation is model for many U.S. national parks. Though protecting natural spaces for human use influenced much of America’s environmental policies, it is the protection of natural spaces in and of themselves that led to a rise in national parks. There were initiatives to preserve wildlife and the pristine, untouched aspect of nature. There was a growing desire to go back to nature and outdoor recreation. For many Americans, these parks are celebrated but “for indigenous peoples, they represent a complex history of displacement, cultural erasure” and forced migration (AICA, 2025). The idea of parks being pristine and untouched only holds up when you forget Native American communities.

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The writers also use logical reasoning to persuade the reader. Tempest Williams (1991) goes into detail about how the bombings caused his family’s cancer. If he only appealed to emotions, his argument that human action was responsible for his family’s sickness would not have been accepted. He writes, “not only were the winds blowing north covering “low-use segments of the population” with fallout and leaving sheep dead in their tracks, but the climate was right (Tempest Williams, 1991, 283). This kind of reasoning is especially seen in “Environmental Justice in the 21st Century” by Bullard. Bullard focuses his writing on logical reasoning because he argues the importance of environmental justice as a concept. He cites summit sessions and executive orders in order to prove that environmental justice is crucial for the well-being of both the earth and the people.

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Some people suffer from ecological damage more than others. This is the premise of environmental racism. Certain communities that experience social inequalities most often disproportionately experience the effects of ecological contamination. These marginalized communities are unevenly exposed to fumes, soot, and other pollutants. As a result, these communities suffer a greater rate of health problems. An example of this is zoning. Zoning is the practice of designating areas of a municipality specifically for residential, commercial or industrial use. Due to zoning, many polluting industries were placed in an around communities that had higher percentages of people of color and of lower socio-economic classes.

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To connect and reason with the reader, the writers in both ecology and environmental justice include personal experiences. Even Bullard’s work, which is steeped in logical reasoning, included some kind of personal experience. Though he didn’t go in depth, because he included that his wife was the lawyer who “filed a class action lawsuit to block construction” that would harm a community in the very beginning of the chapter, his writing became a lot more connected and consequential. This is especially true for Ortiz (1992) and Tempest William’s (1991) writings. Their use of personal experiences up the stakes for whatever they’re trying to communicate. Whether it be environmental racism or pollution.

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This article, like other environmental justice and ecology writing, uses examples that incite urgency. This blog focuses on the Mountain Valley Pipeline that would cut through Virginia’s Jefferson National Forest. The pipeline is portrayed as an environmental risk that could pollute waterways and communities. This is a prime example of the types of examples, writers in the ecology and environmental justice paradigm would write about. They would address certain issues such as profit-driven overdevelopment (Ortiz) or zoning (Bullard) with a sense of urgency. That if something does not happen to change what is being done, or in this case what is planned, something terrible would happen to the people and the environment.

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In recent months, the Mountain Valley Pipeline has been in the news as part of efforts to pass a dirty permitting bill in Congress. But while those legislative tactics failed, the pipeline is still a big looming threat to North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia (if passed, the bill would have let the pipeline skip legal challenges).

Once completed, the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline would transport fracked gas with the combined greenhouse-gas impact of 19 million passenger vehicles annually. The project would pollute waterways and communities across Appalachia, making some areas-including many low-income communities and communities of color, which have commonly been prevented from weighing in on development decisions and hit hardest by environmental hazards-into " sacrifice zones." The pipeline's construction has already led to hundreds of water-quality related violations.

As if that's not bad enough, the pipeline would cut across key habitat in Jefferson National Forest, including areas adjacent to two designated wilderness areas. It is set to rip through an area of roadless forest and habitat for species including endangered fish and bats.

Though the Mountain Valley Pipeline is a big threat, it's far from a given that it will end up being built. There are some major legal hurdles in the project's path. It is already years behind schedule. Bottom line: This is a time when we can really make a difference. And it's certainly no time to give up the fight.
Please tell the Biden administration Mountain Valley Pipeline must not be moved forward.

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We can't allow the Mountain Valley Pipeline to cut through Appalachia

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The Biden administration recently issued an environmental impact statement that would pave the way for the notorious Mountain Valley Pipeline to cut through Virginia's Jefferson National Forest. The public has until Feb. 21 to tell the U.S. Forest Service Management the project poses an unacceptable risk to communities, clean water, wildlands and the climate.

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A sacrifice zone is a geographic area that has been permanently impaired by heavy environmental alterations and/or economic disinvestment, typically through unwanted land use such as mining, heavy industry, and waste disposal. These are areas with a high concentration of pollutants and are thus disruptive to whatever communities they are in or near to. Communities that are close to sacrifice zones have suffered from many illnesses caused by the toxic environment, whether it be the land, air or water. In addition, it is often communities of color that are near these sacrifice zones, as polluting plants are more likely to be built in areas where people of color live.

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Ecology and environmental justice are two paradigms that communicate the interconnections between humans and nature. Ecology does so through the display of unethical humans as a disruptive for both society and nature. While environmental justice does so through expressing how the differences in experiences with nature is influenced by social inequality. Writers within both paradigms wants the readers to understand that the separation between civilization and the natural environment is as thin as the separation between nature and culture. In order to communicate this, they write to persuade. Writers within the Ecology paradigm like Terry Tempest Williams (Clan of One-breasted Women) and writers within the Environmental Justice paradigm like Simon J. Ortiz (Woven Stone) and Robert D. Bullard (Environmental Justice in the 21st Century) use elements of persuasion in their writings. They hope to influence opinions and preconceptions about society and nature. They also want to promote a different way of thinking about U.S. environmentalism that is more diverse and particular.

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Writers within the ecology paradigm tend to argue the importance of ethics or morals in nature conservation. There is an argument that a person’s ego, self-ambition and pride has to die for them to truly see how their actions have negatively affected the environment around them. Even environmental justice writers argue that we must address the discrimination and racism that has propagated much environmental harm. This article highlights the fact that humans tend to look for stopgaps that can delay the ramifications of selfishness instead of actually going to the root of the issue, which is cultural ethics. Dividing the world into two groups, us and them or nature and culture, is just a distraction from greater environmental issues that need to be addressed.

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In recent months, the Mountain Valley Pipeline has been in the news as part of efforts to pass a dirty permitting bill in Congress. But while those legislative tactics failed, the pipeline is still a big looming threat to North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia (if passed, the bill would have let the pipeline skip legal challenges).

Once completed, the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline would transport fracked gas with the combined greenhouse-gas impact of 19 million passenger vehicles annually. The project would pollute waterways and communities across Appalachia, making some areas-including many low-income communities and communities of color, which have commonly been prevented from weighing in on development decisions and hit hardest by environmental hazards-into " sacrifice zones." The pipeline's construction has already led to hundreds of water-quality related violations.

As if that's not bad enough, the pipeline would cut across key habitat in Jefferson National Forest, including areas adjacent to two designated wilderness areas. It is set to rip through an area of roadless forest and habitat for species including endangered fish and bats.

Though the Mountain Valley Pipeline is a big threat, it's far from a given that it will end up being built. There are some major legal hurdles in the project's path. It is already years behind schedule. Bottom line: This is a time when we can really make a difference. And it's certainly no time to give up the fight.
Please tell the Biden administration Mountain Valley Pipeline must not be moved forward.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
We can't allow the Mountain Valley Pipeline to cut through Appalachia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Biden administration recently issued an environmental impact statement that would pave the way for the notorious Mountain Valley Pipeline to cut through Virginia's Jefferson National Forest. The public has until Feb. 21 to tell the U.S. Forest Service Management the project poses an unacceptable risk to communities, clean water, wildlands and the climate.

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Ecological authenticity is the argument is that the self-absorbed ego gets in the way of true environmental consciousness, which must be attuned to interconnections. For a whole understanding of the role humans play in nature and the extent to which civilization has hurt/damaged the natural environment, we must first lay aside our egos. We must remove that aspect of self that seeks only for prosperity for self and nothing else. Ecological authenticity advocates a dismissal of self-identity in favor of identification with a given ecosystem as a whole. Our connection to the different species and habitats around us is to be what guides the decisions we make about the environment, not our own comfort and convenience.

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AICA. (2025). Indigenous Stewardship and the Legacy of National Parks on Tribal Lands. Indigenous Stewardship and the Legacy of National Parks on Tribal Lands (www.aicago.org for full article) - AICA | American Indian Center of Arkansas

Bullard, R. D. Environmental justice in the twenty-first century. In The quest for environmental justice: Human rights and the politics of pollution (pp. 19–42). Sierra Club Books.

Gilbert, S. (2016). The Forgotten Victims of the First Atomic Bomb Blast. The Forgotten Victims of the First Atomic Bomb Blast.

Little, B. (2024). The Atomic Bomb’s First Victims Were in New Mexico. https://www.history.com/news/atomic-bomb-test-victims-new-mexico-downwinders

Ortiz, S. J. (2006). Woven Stone Simon J. Ortiz. Univ. of Arizona Press.

Williams, T. T. (1991). The Clan of One-breasted Women. In Refuge. New York: Pantheon Books.

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Deep ecology is the belief in the inherent or intrinsic worth of nonhuman creatures or nature as a whole. Unsurprisingly, this belief is found within the ecology paradigm. It assumes a biocentric perspective as opposed to anthropocentrism. Deep ecology values the view that nature, regardless of utility, is valuable. Deep ecologists also tend to view all human activity as harmful to ecological "balance." They believe that humans are the source of environmental harm.