Q7 - Environmentalist: The excessive buildup

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Logical Completion (since the blank is part of the Conclusion, we would think of this like an Inference question)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Terrible consequences of too much atmospheric CO2 are unavoidable unless we do _____.
Evidence: Stopping the excess of CO2 requires burning less fossil fuel. Burning less fuel would reduce a nation's GNP. And no nation will be willing to singlehandedly pay the cost for something that benefits everyone.

Answer Anticipation:
Essentially, this LSAT question is asking us to solve the real world problem of global warming. Given that we need to reduce fossil fuel usage and that doing so lowers GNP, how do we get countries to do so without feeling like they're singlehandedly bearing the costs for something that benefits everyone? Well, why does it have to be singlehandedly? If everyone collectively agreed to reduce fuel by a given percentage, then everyone would be equally (proportionally) bearing the costs.

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This is the opposite of what we'd need. They would have to be MORE concerned with global warming than with lower GNP.

(B) "Multinational corporations" kinda comes out of nowhere. This solution might actually work, but it seems counterintuitive. If NATIONS are unwilling to voluntarily reduce their GNP for the sake of global benefit, then why would profit-driven CORPORATIONS be willing to do so?

(C) Looks good! This sounds like nations decide to do this collectively, so that none of them feel like they're "singlehandedly" bearing the costs.

(D) Extrem: distrust is ELIMINATED? The issue here is less about distrust then fairness. IF we had an international agreement, then we would probably have to trust that other nations would follow through as promised. But this answer is making it seem like "trust" is our initial stumbling block, while the stimulus identified "an unwillingness to singlehandedly bear the costs" as the dealbreaker.

(E) Extreme: Whoa. Slow your roll there, E. Although a world government probably WOULD have a better chance enacting global restrictions on fossil fuel, it's an incredibly strong and far-fetched leap to go from this stimulus to world government. The lead up language is that "in order to solve the problem, we'll NEED this". Do we NEED a world government or just SOME form of international cooperation? (C) manages to solve the problem in the 2nd to last sentence in a much more realistic, conservative, attainable way.

Takeaway/Pattern: Logical Completion is really about picking an answer choice that safely synthesizes the stuff we were told. There are normally two different strands of thought and the conclusion brings them together without going overboard. Here, we had a PROBLEM to solve (too much CO2), a required solution (reduce fossil fuel), and an impasse to that solution (nations don't want to sacrifice singlehandedly). And the conclusion is saying, "we clearly won't be able to enact the required solution to our problem unless [we get past this impasse]." Although more than one answer may seem like a potential way to get past the impasse, the test is rewarding us for staying within the mindset of the stimulus, so lean towards answers that seem more contained in the original thinking.

#officialexplanation

[danitay]

Sadly, I was only able to eliminate one answer from the options (A). It seems to me like any of the remaining answers could be used to logically complete the argument. In particular, why is C the best answer? Are they conflating the word "produce [industrial emissions standards]" with "impose"? To me, that seems like two different things. For ex, countries could get together and produce/draft an emissions standards document but then not actually impose those standards. Thank you very much!

[tianfeng102]

Premise:
1) Stop excessive CO2 --> reduce burning of fossil fuels
2) Reduction of fossil fuels --> country's imposing strict emission standards
3) Country's imposing strict emission standards --> country hurt by reduced GDP
4) Country hurt alone by reduced GDP --> country won't bear the cost alone

Conclusion:
Stop excessive CO2 --> ???

Well, based on the logic chain, the answer has to be "one country won't bear the cost alone." Only C is close enough to the required action in order to stop excessive CO2 buildup.

[danitay]

Thank you very much for the explanation!

[lhermary]

Why is C and better answer then B?

Thanks

[citylife]

I think there are a couple of problems with B:

1) it talks about "multinational corporations" - and the stimulus discusses "nations" - Shell Game

2) voluntary really wouldn't work here - even if statement said 'nations' i think that voluntary is not strong enough - any nation could not follow

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

nice work citylife! Your point about the voluntary nature of the agreement is the reason I would eliminate answer choice (B). Can I play devil's advocate just for a second?

What would you say to someone who pointed to the claim in the passage that related the strict emissions standards to industrial burning of fossil fuels. Does that bring the answer choice close about multinational corporations? Or is that still a shell game?

[timmydoeslsat]

I like the thought provoking question Matt!

I would say that the multinational corporations would still be out of scope because even though it mentions industrial burning, this could include corporations that are located in a single country alone. There may be only one multinational corporation while we have 100 strict national corporations, which would make the point about multinational corporations out of scope.

[james.h.meyers]

I want to know why if (C) works does (E) not work. It's ridiculous, obviously, but it seems to be just as logically valid as (C). (Though if it were, I suppose it wouldn't be a wrong answer choice.)

[doylemurphy89]

I considered E at first but then eliminated it because establishing a world gov't wouldn't go far enough as the newly created world gov't would still have to impose strict emission standards

[amil91]

I considered E at first but then eliminated it because establishing a world gov't wouldn't go far enough as the newly created world gov't would still have to impose strict emission standards

This is a good point. I eliminated E because it was too far of a leap from the stimulus. After reading the stimulus I was expecting an answer along the lines of there being an international regulation or agreement or something that would force all nations to participate in a reduction of burning fossil fuels. To me establishing a world government is just too far from that. Sure that could be a way to accomplish the burning of less fossil fuels, but it isn't the only way, and choice E itself doesn't really connect to actually reducing the amount of fuels burned. I think E would make more sense if it followed a statement similar to choice C.

[christine.defenbaugh]

Excellent thoughts amil91!

Let's take a step back and take careful note of the conclusion. Catastrophic CO2 is unavoidable unless something.

So, without that something, we are DOOMED. We NEED that something to save us! It is the only way!

What we know from the stimulus is that there's no way to achieve the necessary emissions standards by using a solitary country - so if we're going to save ourselves, we need something other than a single country's efforts.

There's nothing in the stimulus that indicates we absolutely have to have a world government to save us from the CO2 (E). It could theoretically work, if that government imposed emissions standards, but there are ways to succeed at controlling CO2 without resorting to the world government approach. Since we don't absolutely need it, this cannot be our answer.

(C) takes a far softer approach - we need internationally agreed upon standards. If we need the emissions standards, and we can't use single countries, then we need some 'multi-country' effort! If we don't get that, we won't get the emissions standards imposed. And if we don't get emissions standards imposed, we can't reduce the burning of fossil fuels. And if we can't reduce the burning of fossil fuels, the excessive CO2 buildup cannot be stopped!


Note that you could diagram this as formal logic:

Reduce CO2 --> reduce FF burn
Reduce FF burn --> impose strict emission standards
Impose strict emission standards --> no single country

THUS: CO2 not reduced UNLESS _______

Link all those conditionals, and it becomes clear that CO2 cannot be reduced unless we find a multi-country emissions standard solution!


Please let me know if this helps make this question more clear!

[pipegroup]

I chose B over C because C only mentions "produc(ing) industrial emission standards". I saw that the two answers differed in terms of corporations vs. nations, but B mentions strict emission standards, while C only mentions emission standards. My thinking was, it's possible that producing a standard for emissions is not the same as reducing emissions through strict standards.

Am I reading too much into this? Was the corps. vs. nations the deciding factor here?

Thanks all,
CJ

[kyuya]

Going to break down this stimulus, and then try to make sense of what should fill in the blank.

Stimulus breakdown:

1.) CO2 build up can only be stopped by stopping the burning of fossil fuels
2.) any country that would stop the burning of fossil fuels would reduce its GNP
3.) No nation would be willing to stop the burning of fossil fuels BY ITSELF, because they alone would lose GNP and would thus be at a disadvantage
4.) Therefore, CO2 damages can only be curtailed by....

I think what is key to understand here is the third point I've made. So we know no country will stop by itself. Then, the author draws a conclusion.

Therefore, we can reasonably expect that in order to solve this problem, there must be some type of agreement among Countries if this fossil fuel problem is to be solved. Why? Because remember, the ONLY way to solve it is by reducing the burning of fossil fuels. But.. no country will stop burning fossil fuels alone!

Okay so with a rough idea of what we think should fit into the blank, we can move on the answer choices.

(A) All nations become LESS concerned with pollution? This right away seems like a bad answer. I think if this was reversed, perhaps it would be better. For example, if it said all nations become less concerned with ECONOMIC BURDENS OF PREVENTING IT and more concerned with pollution.

However, the language is reversed and I think this is intentional. if you don't read slowly, it could confuse you. However, I'm not sure how great of an answer this would be anyway. If it were reversed, it would probably be an answer I kept and moved on - but since it is not, eliminate it.

(B) This is a bit confusing because of the talk of multinational corporations, and the fact we are probably prephrasing looking for words such as "multinational". However, we are not concerned with corporations. We are looking for something that links all the countries agreeing to some sort of limitation on the burning of fossil fuels. Eliminate this.

(C) Ah, this one looks good.. I'd keep it and move on.

(D) Distrust among nations? This was never an issue. Eliminate.

(E) Seems so far off. Has nothing to do with anything here.. eliminate.


Okay, so back to (C) ..

(C) provides us with the international agreements we would need (remember, we need multiple countries to agree) on emission standards.

Ultimately, this type of questions force you to slow down and synthesize what is being said in the stimulus. Prephrase what is going to be needed for the blank you must fill in. Its important to be aware of words, such as in this stimulus, as ONLY which ultimately lead to the correct answer because it tells us what is required of the right answer.

[dontmesswmeow]

Just to piggyback on what others have commented on the question -

I personally liked the answer choice (E) very strongly because if no single country can/is willing to handle the emission problem, then some kind of intergovernmental entity has to be formed in some way---and at that point, I thought of the world government in the stimulus as something like the United Nations. On top of that, maybe I went too far, but I considered answer choice (C) definitely wrong at my first try because I saw the issue in the stimulus was not about getting agreement on producing the emission standards because even if there might have existed some reasonable (strict) standards, chances are that only a handful of countries might observe such standards and disproportionately put in efforts as opposed to the rest.

So I thought that the issue seemed, rather, to be getting as many nations, if not all, into the CO2 reduction efforts across the globe.

Come to think of it, however, now I see that why (E) might fall short of being the correct answer---the answer must be not enough if, as in (E), it says just that a world government need to be established which might not necessarily lead to substantial efforts that would respond to the situation that no nation would want to singlehandedly burden the environmental costs.

Some actual international cooperation should happen which bears/shares "the cost for benefiting everyone." So (E) certainly best fits with what the given question asks although it IS tough to get at a glance.