Never Retreat

Never Retreat

By Paul Fleischman

Multiple Choice

An objective point of view is based on...

• a person's opinion

• facts

Multiple Choice

A subjective point of view is based on...

• a person's opinion

• facts

Multiple Choice

Which would describe an objective point of view?

• Facts about dolphins

• Opinions about dolphins

Multiple Choice

Which would describe a subjective point of view?

• Data that shows the spread of coronavirus

• A conspiracy theory about the spread of coronavirus

SETTING A PURPOSE

As you read, identify the author’s opinions about modern environmental problems and about the way many people live today. In addition, pay attention to the historical and present-day evidence that he offers to support his argument.

Paragraph 1

Our dependence on fossil fuels didn’t arise from an evil plot but through our curiosity and ingenuity. Coal was seen only as a heat source until we found it could power steam engines. Later we discovered that the gas it gave off when heated could light homes and streets. Gasoline was considered a useless by-product of petroleum—and then came the internal combustion engine.

Multiple Select

What are the two energy sources about which people's attitudes changed?

• Coal

• Wind

• Gasoline

• Petroleum

Paragraph 2

Necessity is said to be the mother of invention, but the reverse is also true. We tinker and probe, then see if our discovery fills any need, including needs we didn’t know we had.

Paragraph 3

With fossil fuels, new uses multiplied madly until we wove them into every corner of our lives. What used to be luxuries—garage-door openers, dishwashers, cell phones—came to feel like necessities. It’s easy to go up the lifestyle ladder but painful climbing down. This is important.

Multiple Choice

In paragraph 3, what is the author's claim about learning to live without the things we consider necessary?

• With fossil fuels, new uses multiplied madly until we wove them into every corner of our lives.

• What used to be luxuries—garage-door openers, dishwashers, cell phones—came to feel like necessities.

• It’s easy to go up the lifestyle ladder but painful climbing down.

Open Ended

What would be an example of a change that would make the author's claim true in your life?

Sentence Stem: An example of a change that makes the author's claim true to my life is ______.

Paragraph 4

It’s not hard to understand. The windfall of cheap fossil fuels that’s fueled the West for two centuries got us used to ever-rising living standards. Energy buys convenience. And convenience is addictive—highly so. Each increased dosage quickly becomes our new minimum requirement. You see this whenever gas prices rise and endanger our freedom to drive as much as we want—causing politicians to leap into action on our behalf. They know that whatever level of comfort we’re at feels like a must.

Paragraph 5

To escape from the environmental crunch, we don’t need to throw out our entire lifestyle but simply to power it on something other than fossil fuels. We’re on the way. Switching to renewables for electricity is probably the easy part. Harder will be getting oil out of transportation and agriculture and the military, as well as all the products it’s currently in: the asphalt in your street, the carpet on your floor, the clothes in your closet, and all the plastic around you in furniture, appliances, cars, and packaging. Can we run this film in reverse? Only once have we replaced an energy source so central to our economy and lifestyle: when slave labor was abolished, a change so jarring that its threat brought on war.

Paragraph 6

When our standard of living is threatened by scarcity and side effects, you’d think we’d cut back. Instead, the common response is to maintain it at any cost. Bluefin tuna is in steep decline, but the tuna-loving Japanese are catching all they can. We know our freshwater aquifers are limited, but we’re draining them faster rather than slower. Scarcity was humankind’s enemy for so long that resistance to a downshift in lifestyle is strong. At the first international climate summit in 1992, the U.S. delegation’s attitude was that America’s standard of living wasn’t up for negotiation. Every U.S. administration since then has followed the same path.

Paragraph 7

Developing countries feel the same. People getting their first paved roads, safe water, electric lights, and refrigerators don’t want to march backward any more than the West does.

Paragraph 8

Using less energy and consuming less—taking a step down the ladder—would make the West’s transition to renewables that much easier. What would happen if we cut the amount of stuff we bought in half? We’d save hugely on resources as well as on the energy needed to make them into products. We’d also lose large numbers of jobs. To keep employment up, we need people to keep buying bacon-flavored dental floss and Elvis Presley mouse pads and other nonessentials. The call “Never retreat” comes from us both as consumers and breadwinners.

Open Ended

What are the two nonessentials the author lists in paragraph 8?

Sentence Stem: The two nonessentials the author lists are ______.

Multiple Choice

Is the author presenting an objective or subjective point of view in paragraph 8?

• Subjective Point of View

• Objective Point of View

Paragraph 9

Many have sketched a sustainable economy that doesn’t rest on unnecessary consumption. These proposals often favor decentralization—a more dispersed and rural society, with people growing more of their own food and generating more of their own power. This would give us an economy with greater resilience than our current highly connected one.

Paragraph 10

What’s the problem with highly integrated systems? They’re efficient and low cost, but brittle. Ours brings us fruit from South America and computer parts from China but leaves us in the lurch if anything interrupts trade. We’re so connected that a single power outage or oil shortage affects millions. Sicknesses can more easily become epidemics. The American housing collapse of 2008 quickly brought on a worldwide recession.

Paragraph 11

Life used to be much more decentralized. The Transition movement, beginning in Britain, guides communities toward a lower energy, more self-sufficient future, with hundreds of branches active in the United States and elsewhere. The Slow Food movement, back-to-the-landers reviving rural skills, and those pursuing voluntary simplicity are pointed in the same direction.

Paragraph 12

What might a major lifestyle downshift feel like? Real-world Americans experienced a downshift during World War II. The U.S. auto industry stopped making cars and switched to building tanks and planes. Gasoline, milk, meat, coffee, cheese, sugar, heating oil, and shoes were strictly rationed. Could we do it again?

Paragraph 13

Adaptability is one of humankind’s hallmarks. We evolved during difficult climatic times, when temperatures swung between ice ages and warmer interglacial periods, times so challenging that the twenty or so other strains of humans who weren’t as flexible all died out. Is that ability to adapt still within us?

Paragraph 14

Consider a power outage’s frustrations, then the gradual adaptation the longer it goes on until dining by lantern light feels almost normal. Use of mass transit goes up when gas prices rise. We adjust to water rationing. When a job is lost in the family, we cut budgets. People think they can’t go backward, then find out that they can. We ended up succeeding in getting rid of slavery, after all. Stranger still to a time-traveling slave owner: we no longer even notice its absence.

Open Ended

What does the author argue in the text?

Sentence Stem: The author argues that ______.