Which Logical Fallacy Is This?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve tried looking at fallacy sites but I’m not having much luck.

Person 1: Look at this news article about factories dumping mercury into the rivers! Why doesn’t the government do anything about this?

Person 2: The environment is everyone’s business. If you really cared about pollution, you’d be out picking up roadside trash instead of sitting here complaining to me about it.

Thanks in advance.

2

I’m not sure what you’re claiming is a fallacy? Maybe some sort of abstraction of the argument to expose what you think is wrong is in order?

3

I don’t know that it is a logical fallacy in the ususal meaning of that term. However, the response is an evasion. Person 1’s complaint was the lack of action in the case of mercury being dumped in rivers. Person 2’s attack on 1’s not picking up roadside trash is evading the issue. Person 1 picking up roadside trash will not ameliorate the problem of mercury being dumped in rivers.

4

Non sequitir, perhaps?

5

It’s either a false dichotomy fallacy or a Fallacists Fallacy (argumentum ad logicam )

6

It could just possibly be the fallacy of “accident.” This is the fallacy of claiming that because two cases are illustrations of a general principle they are the same even though their individual circumstances (accidents) are different.

Both dumping mercury in rivers and roadside trash are examples of environmental degradation. However their circumstances are so different that not correcting one, roadside trash, is not germane to the concern about the other, mercury in rivers.

7

David Simmons sort of hit on my problem with it and maybe I was wrong in considering it a fallacy.

My issue is the idea that Person 2 is dismissing Person 1’s argument based on action/inaction from Person 1 which is very loosely connected (i.e. pollution) but ultimately unrelated.

8

Seems to me that it’s a blend of the ad hominem fallacy and the tu quoque fallacy.

The Ad Hom fallacy is that “because of the first person’s history of not cleaning up roadside trash, his statement must not be true.”
The Tu quoque fallacy is that “because of the first person’s failure to care for the environment in the past, he doesn’t really care for it in any other situation.”