Critical Reasoning

Clear-cutting a tropical rainforest exposes its shallow soil to heavy tropical rain. The soil is quickly washed away, causing floods and landslides, and preventing regeneration of the original rainforest. However, fast-growing softwoods, which can be harvested for a profit, will grow in clear-cut areas, halting further soil runoff. If we can't prevent clear-cutting, we should provide tax relief to companies that plant softwood plantations in clear-cut areas in order to minimize environmental degradation.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously calls into question the advisability of the above scheme?

A. Softwood plantations usually contain only one type of tree, and so lack the biodiversity of the original rainforest.
B. Increasing the value of clear-cut land will encourage the clear-cutting of more rain forest.
C. It would be cheaper to halt flooding and landslides by building dams and levees.
D. The original rainforests are clear-cut to obtain hardwoods, which are many times more valuable than softwoods.
E. Government incentives tend to have far reaching consequences that are difficult to predict and may turn out to be counterproductive.

[spoiler]Source : Kaplan
OA :Later [/spoiler]

IMO - B

Hi,

The answer is B.

Was caught between B and D.

My pick is B ,as it shows that clear-cutting is encouraged as opposed to the intention of the argument, to avoid or minimize environmental degradation.


What is the OA?

OA is B.

But here is my confusion.

If B is as :

< Giving tax relief> will encourage the clear-cutting of more rain forest. --> Then I agree that B is the answer.

But B is :

< Increasing the value of clear-cut land > will encourage the clear-cutting of more rain forest.

I don't understand how <Increasing the value of clear-cut land> is related to the argument.

Please put your thoughts.

Can somebody explain the above post.

Thanks

The answer to your question lies within this portion of the stimulus:

However, fast-growing softwoods, which can be harvested for a profit, will grow in clear-cut areas, halting further soil runoff. If we can't prevent clear-cutting, we should provide tax relief to companies that plant softwood plantations in clear-cut areas in order to minimize environmental degradation.

Above scheme is increasing the value of clear-cut land by providing an alternative to harvest more profit off the land, and on top of that, offer tax incentive to companies that are profiting off such land. Of course this is working with the assumption that the clear-cut area has little to no value once the rainforest is cut down from the land, but since there isn't a better choice available, this assumption is not far fetched.