The following appeared in a newsletter distributed at a recent political rally."Over the past year, the Consolidated Copper Company (CCC) has purchased over one million square miles of land in the tropical nation of West Fredonia. Mining copper on this la

In this letter, the author recommends that consumers give up purchasing the products of CCC to prevent the contamination and environmental disaster. To support this recommendation he points out that CCC’s mining copper operation will end up with pollution and environmental disaster by buying a large amount of land in the tropical nation of West Fredonia which is the living place for several endangered animal species. A careful examination of this evidence reveals that it lends little credence to this argument for several respects.

First, the author unfairly assumes that CCC will conduct mining copper on the whole amount of the land that has bought. It might have other purposes besides mining operation such as providing accommodation for the workers and their families in the proximity of their work to increase its production. In this case the pollution of environment related to the amount of extracted copper will be much lower in comparison with the case in which the whole amount of land is under operation. Without considering and ruling out this and other possible purposes of buying great amount of land this claim will not be corroborated.

Second, even if the company holds the purpose of utilizing the whole land for mining operations there is no dear evidence that demonstrates the administrators will successfully keep on following their goals. There might be problems in their long term activities to establish the plants over the purchased land such as financial and management problems. Therefore, without eliminating these possibilities the author can not substantiate his claim.

Third, considering the company will progress its mining operation over the whole land without facing any difficulties in long term, it can not reasonably be concluded that it will stop its operation when the consumers refuse to buy its products. If the author considers the regional or national consumers, the company might have other customers in other countries. Therefore, merely by omitting its domestic customers it will not be forced to ultimate its operation since it is still operating internationally.

In sum, the letter fails to convince me that the refusal of the consumers to purchase the products of the company will contribute to limiting the companies operation and less pollution and environmental loss. To bolster this argument, the author must provide authentic evidence that the company will work on the whole amount of purchased land and also provide more information about the long term decisions and performance of its administrators. To better assess the strength of the recommendation I need more clear information about the number of company’s customers and about whether it is working internationally.