Reading Comprehension

PT23 · S4 · P3 · Q17 Environmental Alarmists

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The debate over the environmental crisis is not new; anxiety about industry’s impact on the environment has existed for over a century.

https://assets.lsatlab.com/uploads/2022/04/pt23-p4.mp4

Topic

The changing attitudes toward the environmental crisis and how views on industry’s impact on nature have shifted and polarized over time.

Framework

Old / New

Main Point

The debate on environmental issues has become much more polarized compared to the past, largely due to a shift in the way people perceive nature and humanity's role in relation to it. (Most Valuable Sentence: P1, )

P1: Introduction – The Rise of Polarization

A century ago, there was concern about environmental damage, but today the debate is way more polarized, with environmentalists and industry at odds, making productive cooperation even harder.

P2: Contrast with the Past

Back in the day, people like George Marsh could harshly criticize environmental destruction and still be taken seriously—nobody felt the need to aggressively defend industry or deny environmental harms.

17.

The passage suggests that George P. Marsh and today's ecological reformers would be most likely to agree with which one of the following statements?

  1. Regulating industries in order to

    Unsupported 2nd Position

    This doesn't superficially sound like Marsh. Marsh was business-friendly, and this answer seems to be justifying slapping down some regulations on industry. But Marsh thought his prescribed reforms were in the self-interest of everyone. So he might agree that regulations enforcing his prescribed reforms would not be going against the self-interest of the industries. When it comes to the New environmentalists, we'd assume they would be happy to have regulations limiting the pollution of industry, but we have no reason to think they would consider it in the self-interest of the factories being regulated. The regulations are in the interest of the global environment, not the individual companies' bottom lines. The regulations would be seen as a counterweight to corporate greed, not as a blessing to the corporations financial situation.

    5% picked this

  2. Solving the environmental crisis does

    Disagree

    This is one of the key contrasts drawn between Old and New, so they wouldn't overlap on this one. Marsh's "corrective measures seemed to entail no sacrifice, to demand no draconian (harsh) remedies." Meanwhile, todays environmentalist's represent a gloomier, more alarmist, more demanding perspective.

    7% picked this

  3. Correct

    Human despoliation of the Earth

    Why this is right

    This is basically what we were looking for: "I care about the environment and I worry that humans have messed it up". We know from the 2nd paragraph that Marsh, "castigated (harshly criticized) Earth's despoilers" saying that the Earth has been made as desolate as the Moon. And the New type of environmentalist is even more hair-on-fire about this. In the 4th paragraph, we hear one of their ideas: Despoliation thwarted the culmination or shortened the duration of this beneficent climax Translation: humans are messing up the environment

    Skill tested: Non-Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

    68% picked this

  4. Environmental improvement and economic progress

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: equally important 2nd Position Disagrees The New school environmentalists would seemingly disagree. They prioritize environmental improvement over industry. And even Marsh wouldn't necessarily agree to this very extreme formulation that the two goals are equally important. He definitely thinks both are important givens, but we never got into comparing them head-to-head.

    6% picked this

  5. Rather than blaming specific industries,

    Disagree

    This is one of the key contrasts drawn between Old and New, so they wouldn't overlap on this one. Marsh "denounced general greed rather than particular entrepreneurs, and the media did not hound malefactors." The new school writes "accusatory polemics".

    14% picked this

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