PrepTest 135, Section 1, Question 21
In several countries, to slow global warming, many(56 more words not shown)
The argument requires the assumption(1 more words not shown)
- Atrees not only(7 more words not shown)
- Bmost farmers do(15 more words not shown)
- Cland that has(7 more words not shown)
- Dsome of the(16 more words not shown)
- Efew if any(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Being worse than grass doesn't automatically make a tree worse than what was there before.
I can see why someone would question the incentives. If the goal is to remove carbon dioxide, perhaps we should compare trees with crops that also produce food, or consider other uses for the government's resources. Those are possible alternatives to investigate. The actual study gives us a narrower comparison: native grasses absorb and store carbon dioxide more effectively than trees.
But the conclusion says the incentives hasten global warming—speed it up. That's stronger than saying the government could have chosen a better option. What are the new trees replacing?
Imagine they're planted on bare land where native grasses wouldn't grow. The comparison with grasses would not show that planting those trees made matters worse. Grasses might be better in places where they grow, while trees still improve the particular land being planted.
What we’re looking for
For the necessary assumption, connect the study to what the policy actually changes. At least some of these trees must occupy places where native grasses would otherwise be growing. Without that connection, the grass-versus-tree comparison doesn't give this argument a basis for calling the incentives harmful.
Working the answers
- A
The argument needn't claim that trees release carbon dioxide. Its proposed harm could come from replacing a better absorber with a less effective one. Trees could absorb carbon dioxide without emitting it and still compare unfavorably with the grasses they displace.
- B
We already know many farmers are planting trees because of these incentives. The argument doesn't need a broad claim that most farmers never plant any trees without incentives. Other voluntary tree planting could occur while these particular incentives still had the effect the author alleges.
- C
The land receiving new trees isn't described as previously deforested. A claim about what grows after deforestation doesn't establish what would have been growing in the locations affected by the incentives.
- DCorrect
Some of the incentivized trees replace native grasses that would otherwise grow there. Now the comparison bears on the policy: those locations get a less effective carbon absorber in place of a more effective one.
This is required for the argument's stated reason to work. It doesn't, by itself, prove that the entire policy hastens warming; the size of the replacement and other effects would still matter. But if none of the trees displaced grasses that would otherwise grow, the study's comparison wouldn't establish the claimed harm.
- E
Governments' interest in promoting grasses doesn't settle what the tree incentives do. Native grasses might already grow without any promotion. The argument needs a connection between planting trees and losing those grasses, not a claim about how many governments favor a separate grass policy.
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