Wow..tough.. Slowing the growth of what "damaging forests"/"animal birth rate" ..I dont think A is good

slowing and damaging are parallel and both are responsible for lack of forest growth..

IMO E

X or Y -> X and Y shud be parallel.
in option A-slowing the growth of->growth of what? the or shud actaully be between slowing/growing.
option A incorrectly has or between growth/damaging.

IMO E

My approach

To pick b/w Op A and E will be really easy
place slowing the growth or damaging/damaging or slowing the growth one by one before forests.

in Op A, you see

slowing the growth Forests---> seems incorrect---> why?? it feels like preposition OF is missing
damaging FORESTS----> this one is okay

So if you see the difference b/w Op A and Op E, the only difference is in Op E the preposition OF is there..

Hence E
[/i]

+1 for E.

Based on the same reason about usage of 'of'.

@rohu

can you please justify how you applied the parallelism concept??? i mean structurally in terms of parts of speech how you make those two elements parallel...i didn't get your concept..

Atul,
i just interpreted as damaging the growth of forests or slowing the growth of forests. (acd rain can either damage the growth of forests or slow the growth of forests)
but after seeing your your replies i googled and found out theres a different issue to it.
found Stacey's reply:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/slowing-the- ... 08-15.html

she says the way i interpreted makes no sense.
is it tht growth cannot be damaged,i mean growth isnt tangible after all so it cannot be damaged, right?
thanks for pointing ou Atul, else i would have simply answered and thought my interpretation was correct.

@rohu

holy cow...god...did u notice that concept in Stacey's post...the two elements in this question should not have to be parallel....means its an intentional thing...if u make the two elements parallel...than in that case u get the wrong meaning....so here u must violate the parallelism...crazy man...i have seen this similar concept applied in one question in past, and now this is the second one...thanks god i go on with the meaning thing only and picked a correct answer...after u post the parallelism thing...i applied a hell lot of time, thinking that Op E seems to be correct but the elements are not parallel...and finally from Stacy's post its clear, we must not make them parallel...

Thanks for the link

The string is good. I'd back E too.

@ rohu

Thanks for sharing the link. Stacey is a life saver.

@Atul

Thanks for the explaination of "OF". This is why i was confused btw A and E.It occured to me that Op E implies "damaging the growth". But taking in context of meaning..the use of "of" makes sense.

Reagrds,
Megha

I don't particularly like this question, since choice E, the OA, also carries an ambiguity of being interpreted as 'damaging the growth of' or 'slowing the growth of'. Following simple choice would have taken care of this ambiguity:

There is no consensus on what role, if any, is played by acid rain in slowing the growth of or damaging forests in the eastern United States.

Wonder why this question was discontinued after OG10!!