LSAT 118 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q19

LR Question 19 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Columnist: Much of North America and western Europe …

QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen

CONCLUSION: Being too strict about limiting natural resource use could reduce the wealth needed to keep environmental protections going.

REASONING: The environment in North America and western Europe is better than it was 50 years ago.

ANALYSIS: The stimulus is written in a windy way. Essentially, the author is arguing:

• Environmental improvements exist today.
• So, it’s credible that wealth may be necessary to sustain the policies that produced those improvements.

In that, the key idea is: If environmental policies become too restrictive, they may reduce wealth.

But why? Why think restrictive environmental policies would reduce wealth in the first place?

You might think it’s common sense. Take for instance wealthy nations like Norway or Saudi Arabia. A lot of their wealth comes from oil. If they restrict how many natural resources (like oil) they use, then they might reduce their wealth.

But on the LSAT, assumptions and links like these need to be backed up. So we want an answer that strengthens the link between too restrictive = less wealth.

___________

1. CORRECT. This tells us that nations maintain their wealth by using natural resources. So if environmental policies excessively restrict the use of natural resources, the conclusion makes a lot more sense.
2. Irrelevant. This doesn’t connect anything back to environmental protections and natural resources. We don’t know anything about how technology or social programs connect to the stimulus.
3. Whether ecological disasters are beyond human control has nothing to do with whether restrictive environmental policies can reduce wealth.
4. This might weaken the columnist’s argument. If a compromise would have produced less environmental improvement, then stronger environmental policies seem to have been beneficial.
5. This isn’t a relationship we know anything about. The columnist’s worry is: Wealth sustains environmental policies. This says: Environmental concern increases wealth. That’s an entirely different claim.