Summary
Technological progress is required for economic growth and widespread prosperity. Technological progress also causes a worker’s particular skills to be less crucial to production. A worker’s satisfaction depends on the belief that their work is difficult and requires uncommon skills.
Strongly Supported Conclusions
Clearly, then, technological progress may cause worker satisfaction to decrease.
A
decreases the quality of most products
This answer is unsupported. We don’t know anything about the quality of products from the stimulus.
B
provides benefits only to those whose work is not directly affected by it
This answer is unsupported. We don’t know from the stimulus who, if anyone in particular, benefits from technological progress. We only know that it is required for economic growth and widespread prosperity.
C
is generally opposed by the workers whose work will be directly affected by it
This answer is unsupported. We don’t know from the stimulus whether workers support or oppose technological progress. They may nonetheless support it because it could make their jobs easier, less time consuming, and so forth.
D
causes workers to feel less satisfaction in their work
This answer is strongly supported. We know from the stimulus that worker satisfaction depends on workers believing that their work is difficult. Yet, technological progress causes a worker’s importance to decrease.
E
eliminates many workers’ jobs
This answer is unsupported. We don’t know from the stimulus whether any jobs would be eliminated. To say that a worker’s role becomes less crucial is not equivalent to saying the worker’s role would be eliminated.
Summarize Argument
The environmentalist concludes that returning land to an uncultivated state could avoid a major decrease in meat production while also restoring biodiversity. We know this because the prairie once supported 30 to 70 million bison––which is similar to the number of cattle that the North American prairie currently supports (50 million). However, in order to support the current cattle population, the prairie has been destroyed to produce cattle feed. Bison provide as much meat as cattle, but without needing the pesticides, machinery, or government subsidies that damage the prairie ecosystem.
Identify Conclusion
The conclusion tells us that it is possible to balance restoring biodiversity with maintaining meat production: “Returning as much land as possible to an uncultivated state could restore biodiversity without a major decrease in meat production.”
A
If earlier North American agricultural techniques were reintroduced, meat production would decrease only slightly.
This conditional statement is not supported by the argument, and it is not what the argument intends to prove, so it is not the main conclusion. We only know that uncultivated land would avoid a major decrease in production, not that it would definitely decrease slightly.
B
Protecting the habitat of wild animals so that we can utilize these animals as a food source is more cost effective than raising domesticated animals.
This is an attempt to make a generalization from the information given; this generalization is not made or supported in our argument so it is not the conclusion. Further, the argument does not address what is cost effective.
C
The biodiversity of the North American prairie ecosystem should not be restored if doing so will have intolerable economic consequences.
The “should” in this answer is a value judgement, while the argument consists of descriptive statements, so this is not the main conclusion. Further, the argument does not specifically address economic consequences.
D
Preservation of the remaining North American bison would be a sensible policy.
The argument only specifically talks about the impacts of returning to uncultivated land on meat production and biodiversity; the argument does not make a judgement on what is or is not sensible.
E
The devastation of the North American prairie ecosystem could be largely reversed without significantly decreasing meat production.
This statement about the relationship between agriculture practices and meat production is what the rest of the argument sets out to support. This answer is a paraphrase of the last part of the argument, which we identified as the main conclusion.