PrepTest 138, Section 3, Question 14
Mayor: Our city faces a difficult environmental problem(38 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(18 more words not shown)
- AThe vehicles that(16 more words not shown)
- BThe great costs(12 more words not shown)
- CThe mayor's city(14 more words not shown)
- DMore recycling would(17 more words not shown)
- EPeople who recycle(16 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Recycling leaves less garbage to dispose of. How could it leave us doing worse for the environment overall?
I want to know what we give up or damage in the process. Perhaps a recycling project requires a lot of resources. Perhaps building its facilities would mean cutting down a forest. Those are possibilities, not facts about this city's proposal, but they show how a project can solve one environmental problem while creating another.
What we’re looking for
The question asks us to reconcile the mayor's two claims. We can accept that recycling would greatly reduce the amount of garbage needing disposal. What we need is a reason that benefit doesn't make the projects the best way to minimize total environmental damage.
Working the answers
- A
Less pollution from collection vehicles than from burning the materials sounds like an environmental advantage for recycling. It doesn't explain why the projects would work against the overall goal. We need a disadvantage, not another reason they might help.
- BCorrect
The projects would use money that otherwise could support other pollution-reduction efforts. That gives us a cost beyond the recycling operation itself: the environmental improvements the city would have to forgo.
The garbage reduction can still be real. But if the city gives up more valuable opportunities to reduce pollution in order to fund it, the projects can be counterproductive to minimizing total harm. B supplies that tradeoff. It doesn't need to claim the recycling process itself pollutes more than the old disposal method.
- C
Running out of landfill space explains why the city's garbage is a difficult problem. It doesn't explain why a project that reduces the garbage would be counterproductive. We still need to know what downside comes with the proposed solution.
- D
A greater incentive to use recycled materials doesn't itself identify an environmental harm. The answer doesn't say industries would manufacture more products or use a more damaging process. We'd have to add such a claim to turn this incentive into a reason against recycling.
- E
Feeling less justified in consuming more than needed points toward less wasteful behavior, not an environmental drawback. At most, this suggests another possible benefit associated with recycling. It doesn't explain the mayor's concern that the projects undermine the broader goal.
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