Friday, April 28, 2017

Earthstock / Extra Credit

Earthstock / Extra Credit



As you may know, Earth day was but a few days ago. Earth day takes place on April 22nd of every year. It is a day where everyone around the world in different continents and countries spend the whole day celebrating the well-being of the Earth, raising awareness about climate change and global warming, and encouraging large communities to recycle anything and everything they can. This sort of “traditional” holiday is very important to environmentalists, scientists, and just ordinary people like me because without our healthy, living planet, no of us would be here. Nothing would be here.
I attended an event that occurred on campus this past Saturday (Earth Day 2k17) called Earthstock. It took place outside of the student union behind the decorative fountain. This event included various different booths with vast amounts of information about many things presented by students, organizational leaders, and so on. I caught the tail end of this whole event due to having class around the same time it was going on, however I did manage to visit many of the booths that were set up before they packed up.
The first booth I remember visiting that caught my eye had visibly small cups on it. As I approached it, I noticed that that booth was not only giving away sweet treats to its guests, it was also giving away free tree saplings! The only thing I have to do to earn these rewards were to answer an environmental trivia question. My question was, “What’s the difference between ‘soil’ and ‘dirt’?”. Luckily, my unnecessary detailed answer/explanation did the trick!
Another booth I remember visiting talked about a future public treehouse. The hosts of this booth mentioned that an environmental organization that builds unique treehouses and works nationally has made plans with Lincoln to build a treehouse! They also mentioned that the upcoming Lincoln treehouse might be located near UNL’s city campus so students who live on campus or students who want to kill time can walk there. This treehouse will be of use to different types of events such as small concerts, meetings, social gatherings and much more. The host of this booth were also taking suggestions as to where in Lincoln this treehouse could be built. This booth had pamphlets including about the organization they are working with and they had a volunteer-to-build sign up sheet to receive further information about building dates, how you could help, and so on.
The last booth I visited wasn’t really informationally effective because this booth was only selling custom-made t-shirts for $5. Yeah, $5! You bet I bought myself one to support our mother nature! Although I learned nothing from this booth, they did indeed do a great job in convincing me and many others to buy one or two of their shirts!
The whole point of this event is to raise awareness and concern about our environment and the current stance on climate change as well as ways to promote positive changes and  sustainability. The rhetorical aspects behind visiting the booths include logos, pathos, and ethos. Each of the booths had reasoning to be there for wandering people like me to visit. The first booth I visited had a logos effect. They had sweet treats which encouraged me to visit that booth first. The treehouse booth had an ethos effect because of the organization they were representing. They proved their ethos with the organization’s information within a small pamphlet. This whole event in general demonstrates pathos because a lot of these Earthstock booths encouraged change within our environment to avoid possible future disastrous natural events from occurring. They also argued that without certain types of species, our ecosystems would go haywire and would cease the production of other significant species needed for further survival. The result of increased endangered species would led to extinct species and one of those species could be humans if we don’t wake up and take action now!



I want to thank the volunteers and sponsors for the Earthstock event for having this important event. To me, it means alot to raise awareness.

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