The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a journal on environmental issues."Over the past year, the Crust Copper Company (CCC) has purchased over 10,000 square miles of land in the tropical nation of West Fredonia. Mining copper on this land wi

The author of the statement above, supports the need for people to stop buying products made of CCC's copper, given that the company's actions in mining copper will definitely have disastrous consequences affecting the environment adversely. However, in order to determine if this proposition would be effective, several pieces of additional information and assumptions need to be examined.

First of all, the author maintains that mining over 10,000 square miles of land in West Fredonia can lead to environmental disasters. Consequently, he assumes that 10,000 square miles consist most of Fredonia's land. However, there is no indication of the total amount of land existing in West Fredonia, thus his argument is ambiguous. For instance, 10,000 square miles can only represent 5 percent of the total land, hence mining those lands would not have any consequences in Fredonia's fauna.

Secondly, according to the text the author claiming that mining copper will "inevitably" result in pollution, assumes that the Cruster Copper Company does not take any measures in order to protect the environment. More specifically, the author implies that the only way to mine copper is through polluting the environment, ignoring the fact that there are several eco protecting laws that every company should follow in order to prevent those kinds of environmental phenomena.

Thirdly, the author states that since many endangered animal species live in West Fredonias' land, the pollution caused by mining copper will lead in an environmental disaster, assuming that the endangered species will most probably die. However, this equivocal assumption can be questioned if one thinks that most endangered species are under human protection. Therefore, those animals can live in specially constructed and protected facilities. Thus, in such a disaster, people can protect them.

Finally, the author proposes people to stop buying those products, implying that this action will prevent a potential environmental catastrophe. However, in order to create those products in first place the company must mine copper from the lands and whose to say that when people will stop buying those products, the environmental damage will not be irreversible. Therefore, one should contemplate if stop buying CCC’S products is the right choice.

In conclusion, one cannot neglect the need to take precautions measures and be restless in against dangerous actions such as mining copper, but the arguments proposed in the text by the author, are based on implications and unstated assumptions that cannot be considered as valid.