Critical Reasoning

The council of Shelbyville, which wants to avoid overly depleting the surrounding forest through exports of lumber, is considering subsidizing the import of certain kinds of wood to offset partly the deforestation. Such a step could actually put the forest in more severe danger, since insects often get into wood and can be introduced as a highly destructive force into habitats where they are non-native. Moreover, in the vast majority of cases in which a lumber-exporting city has become a lumber-importing city, the forest surrounding that city has been wiped out a couple years after the switch.

The answer to which of the following would be most useful for evaluating the argument above?

A. Have lobbyists representing the lumber industry in other cities successfully campaigned against subsidizing imports?

B. Would it be feasible for a town that depends on lumber exports to import a significant fraction of the wood it uses?

C. Did the other cities that switched to lumber importing do so because they had deforested the areas within reach of the city?

D. What proportion of lumber jobs in Shelbyville would be lost from subsidies of lumber imports?

E. Are the other cities that made the switch to imported lumber in similar climates?