PrepTest 118, Section 1, Question 19
Columnist: Much of North America and western Europe(74 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(7 more words not shown)
- ANations sustain their(13 more words not shown)
- BThe more advanced(23 more words not shown)
- CA majority of(10 more words not shown)
- DIf a compromise(25 more words not shown)
- EThe concern demonstrated(20 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Things have improved in these regions. That is a reason to question a simple story of everything getting worse, but it doesn't mean every environmental problem is solved.
The long second sentence contains two ideas. First, the improvements may be due largely to environmental policies. Second, the columnist still finds something credible in a warning against policies that restrict resource use too much. Those ideas don't have to conflict. We could value successful environmental policies and also worry about restrictions that make those policies harder to afford.
The economic claim is the part I want explained. The columnist says excessive restrictions may reduce the wealth needed to keep the successful policies going. How much wealth is needed? Why would limiting natural-resource use reduce it? The argument points toward a tradeoff without filling in much of the connection.
What we’re looking for
To strengthen it, I'd expect evidence that maintaining the improvements requires money, perhaps more than a poor country could provide. More broadly, I want support for the concern that environmental protection depends on having enough wealth to sustain it. Let's see which part of that link the choices address.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
This supplies the link from using natural resources to maintaining wealth. If nations sustain much of their wealth through industrial use of those resources, excessively limiting that use could reduce the wealth available for other purposes, including environmental policies.
The argument already describes wealth as necessary to sustain the policies. A supports the missing earlier step: why restrictions on resource use could undermine that wealth. It doesn't establish that all restrictions are bad, or that every environmental policy makes a country poorer.
- B
More advanced technology may help a country devote resources to social programs. But the argument doesn't compare levels of technology or show how restrictions on natural-resource use affect technological advancement. B gives a different relationship without connecting it to the columnist's concern.
- C
Even if most ecological disasters have causes outside human control, that doesn't tell us whether environmental policies undermine the wealth needed to sustain improvements. Nor does uncontrollability show that disaster isn't imminent. C doesn't support the resource-use and funding connection in the argument.
- D
This says a compromise would have produced less improvement than the policies actually adopted. That could favor those policies, but the columnist already allows that environmental policies produced the gains. It doesn't show that excessive restrictions would reduce the wealth needed to keep those gains going.
- E
Concern for ecosystems increasing wealth doesn't support the claim that overly restrictive resource policies may diminish wealth. It points toward a benefit of environmental concern instead. Concern and a particular excessive restriction also aren't identical, so E doesn't settle the columnist's narrower tradeoff either.
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