syn. detached, objective, scientific, unemotional
From Niala Maharaj's "Thorny Truth About Flowers":
Commercial floraculture consumes more water than many Third World flower-growing regions can sustain. On the Bogotá savanna, the water table has fallen so low that household taps run dry most of the week. What water remains is increasingly polluted: Many flower farms let pesticides leach into the groundwater or run off into the area’s shriveling rivers. Flowers consume other resources too-electricity for greenhouses, gas for transport. To fill growing global demand, several 747s and DC-8s fly out of Bogotá every day, each one loaded with as much as 2,400,000 stems heated to keep them from freezing at high altitudes. Once on the ground, flowers are stored in refrigerated warehouses, then distributed by plane or refrigerated truck.
This excerpt from Niala’s and Hohn’s essay on flowers is highly clinical and scientific. They refrain from drawing conclusions by just presenting facts. They reveal how the facilities in Bogotá are not sufficient for growing flowers. Water is “polluted” and “flowers consume other resources.” The consequence is presented then:“747s and DC-8s” make trips to Bogotá with as many as “2,400,000 stems,” which are specially preserved. To retain their objectivity, the authors do not use rhetorical devices or modifiers that could be disputed. The water is polluted, wells do run dry.
Maharaj, Niala and Donovan Hohn. “Thorny Truth About Flowers.” The Bedford
Reader. Ed. X. J. Kennedy, Dorothy M. Kennedy, and Jane E. Aaron. 8th
Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. 286-287.