Shamasundari, Rebecca. “Climate Change Dilemma Driven by Urbanisation.” The ASEAN Post, 26 Aug. 2017, https://theaseanpost.com/article/climate-change-dilemma-driven-urbanisation.

 

Summary:

 

The article, “Climate Change Dilemma Driven by Urbanisation”, focuses on the increased urban population of South-East Asia. People are constantly moving to cities for better opportunities for things such as employment, education, and/or economic reasons. However, poor sustainability for the ever-growing population can cause a lot of damage to the environment. It is said in the article that urban sprawling brings out deforestation, habitat destruction, and greenhouse emission. Living with fewer trees in an urban setting decreases oxygen supply as well as an increased carbon dioxide. Since people living in urban areas also consume more food and energy, this also leads to an increase in commercialization and industrialization, both using fossil fuel. Fossil fuel being the biggest cause of climate change.  

Rhetorical:

This article was written by Rebecca Shamasundari under “The ASEAN Post” website. This media organization creates content that are mainly about renewable energy, geopolitics, and economic topics of South-East Asia. It is an intergovernmental organization of ten countries from South-East Asia. The audience this article targets are the communities in the cities. For them to be educated and understand the care cities need to prevent climate change. Not also the community within the cities but the people in these cities that have the power to help and change ways to better the sustainability of these cities. These are the people that this article is targeting. The genre of this article is an academic genre. It shows charts, writing, and diagrams to help the reader understand the context better. As well as to show what their research has found. Research without diagrams and charts may be hard for readers to understand what the author is trying to show. Which is why the genre this article used, academic genre, is very important to get their message across. The tone the author used was very formal, to show that this is not just another article to read and forget about, instead it is an article to inform and give the people a notice of how urbanization has been one of the main causes of climate change.

Key Quotes:

“Human and nature must co-exist. One without the other is meaningless. There’s no two ways about it.”

“According to Lee, the effects of climate change caused by urbanisation can be addressed by ‘promoting the use of green technologies, improving efficiency in using fossil fuels, reducing traffic congestion and encouraging the use of public transport by improving road and public infrastructure.’”