LR Question 14 Explanation, by LSATHacks
QUESTION TEXT: Environmentalist: Pollution from gasoline burned by…
QUESTION TYPE: Most Strongly Supported
FACTS:
- Gasoline exhaust creates environmental problems.
- Gas prices don’t take account of these problems, so these problems don’t affect how much people drive.
- Taxes on gasoline would reflect the environmental cost. People would pollute less.
ANALYSIS: I couldn’t prephrase anything from these facts. If you’re unable to prephrase a Most Strongly Supported question, you should look over the stimulus a second time to make sure the facts are clear. This clarity will let you go through the answers much faster and with fewer errors.
___________
- I skipped this as soon as I read “should”. The stimulus just gave us facts about what is true. Facts can never prove a moral point.
- It’s possible that people will become environmentally aware, but it doesn’t have to be true. If gas is expensive, you buy less gas, and pollute less as a result. That will happen even if you don’t think about the environment at all.
- CORRECT. This almost feels like it’s repeating the stimulus, but actually it’s a combination of facts 2 and 3. Fact three says taxes would lead people to pollute less, but it doesn’t say why. Fact 2 says higher gas costs cause people to drive less. Combining these two ideas leads to this answer choice.
- This is absurd. You have to take answer choices literally. This answer means that you think of nothing but gas costs when you drive. You ignore, for example: do I need to drive anywhere? How much does a car cost? Do I need to do some work, rather than drive around?
This answer says the only factor in driving is gas cost. Presumably, if gas were free, then you would drive forever, according to this answer. - This actually contradicts the stimulus. The stimulus said higher gas taxes will reduce pollution. Probably this happens whether or not consumers think of the environment.
More Resources for Most Strongly Supported Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Most Strongly Supported questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers most strongly supported questions.
B & C are both the exact same answer. You can break down their literary components and look up word definitions to prove this. Both B & C are correct answers. In fact it can be argued B is more correct than C as it accomplishes the exact same answer with less words.
They’re not the same thing.
B says that heavier taxes would make consumers aware of environmental problems. Where does it say that in the stimulus? The stimulus only says that gasoline can cause environmental issues, and that raising taxes would cause consumers to pollute less. It doesn’t mention AWARENESS on the part of consumers anywhere. So this is wrong.
C is correct. Rather than breaking it down into literary components, it’s more useful to break it down into necessary and sufficient components. Breaking it down this way, Answer Choice C reads:
“if pollution cost reflected in gasoline price -> consumer purchase less gas”
This is an exact rephrase of the last sentence in the stimulus.