According to environmental scientist Dr. Maria Santos, the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments achieved unprecedented success in reducing industrial emissio...
GMAT Craft and Structure : (Structure) Questions
According to environmental scientist Dr. Maria Santos, the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments achieved unprecedented success in reducing industrial emissions. The legislation established a cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide, allowing companies to buy and sell pollution credits within set limits. This market-based approach gave firms flexibility while maintaining environmental goals: companies with lower emissions could sell excess credits to higher-polluting facilities, creating financial incentives for pollution reduction across the entire industry. The program's innovative design transformed environmental regulation from a purely punitive system into one that rewarded efficiency.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?
It challenges an assumption about market-based environmental policies discussed earlier in the text.
It expands on a claim about regulatory mechanisms in environmental policy made earlier in the text.
It provides background information about the legislative history mentioned earlier in the text.
It offers a comparison between different types of environmental regulations discussed earlier in the text.
Step 1: Decode and Map the Passage
Part A: Create Passage Analysis Table
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
|---|---|
| 'According to environmental scientist Dr. Maria Santos, the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments achieved unprecedented success in reducing industrial emissions.' |
|
| 'The legislation established a cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide, allowing companies to buy and sell pollution credits within set limits.' |
|
| 'This market-based approach gave firms flexibility while maintaining environmental goals: companies with lower emissions could sell excess credits to higher-polluting facilities, creating financial incentives for pollution reduction across the entire industry.' |
|
| 'The program's innovative design transformed environmental regulation from a purely punitive system into one that rewarded efficiency.' |
|
Part B: Provide Passage Architecture & Core Elements
Main Point: The 1990 Clean Air Act's cap-and-trade system successfully reduced emissions by using market incentives rather than just punishment.
Argument Flow: The passage starts with an expert's positive assessment, then introduces the specific regulatory mechanism (cap-and-trade), explains exactly how that mechanism operates through market incentives, and concludes by highlighting how this approach fundamentally changed environmental regulation philosophy.
Step 2: Interpret the Question Precisely
What's being asked? The function of the underlined portion within the text as a whole
What type of answer do we need? How this specific sentence serves the overall passage structure and argument
Any limiting keywords? Question Characterization: Content Genre: Humanities & Social Sciences, Content Format: Text-only, Question Type: Purpose (specific part), Language Complexity: Moderate
Step 3: Prethink the Answer
- The underlined portion takes the cap-and-trade system mentioned in the previous sentence and breaks down exactly how it works—explaining the buying and selling of credits and how this creates financial incentives
- It's not introducing something completely new; it's diving deeper into something already mentioned
- The previous sentence told us the system exists; this sentence shows us the mechanics behind it
- So the right answer should recognize that this sentence is elaborating on or expanding upon a regulatory mechanism that was already introduced in the passage
It challenges an assumption about market-based environmental policies discussed earlier in the text.
- This suggests the underlined portion challenges an assumption about market policies
- The sentence doesn't challenge anything—it supports and explains how the market approach works effectively
- Nothing in the passage presents assumptions that are being challenged
It expands on a claim about regulatory mechanisms in environmental policy made earlier in the text.
- The previous sentence introduced the cap-and-trade system as a regulatory mechanism
- The underlined portion expands on this by explaining exactly how the mechanism operates
- It takes the claim about the regulatory system and provides the detailed breakdown of how it functions
- This perfectly matches our prethinking about elaborating on something already introduced
It provides background information about the legislative history mentioned earlier in the text.
- The underlined portion doesn't provide historical background information
- It explains current mechanics, not past legislative history
- Students might see '1990 Clean Air Act' and think any additional information must be historical background, but this sentence explains how the system works, not when/why it was created
It offers a comparison between different types of environmental regulations discussed earlier in the text.
- The underlined portion doesn't compare different types of environmental regulations
- It only explains how one specific system (cap-and-trade) operates
- The comparison between punitive and reward-based systems comes in the final sentence, not the underlined portion