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Difficulty: MediumPrinciple Questions

The municipal energy board recently rejected a proposal to convert the city's district heating network to a closed-loop geothermal system. Although the geothermal conversion would dramatically decrease municipal greenhouse gas emissions over the next thirty years, funding the transition would require reallocating capital currently budgeted for structural reinforcements to the city's aging flood-control levees. Therefore, the municipal energy board was justified in rejecting the geothermal conversion proposal.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the argument above?

  1. A
    A municipal board is justified in approving an infrastructure initiative whenever that initiative avoids reallocating capital away from public safety programs.
  2. B
    Any public expenditure on environmental initiatives is improper unless all other planned municipal capital improvement projects have been fully completed.
  3. A public governing body should not fund long-term environmental improvements if doing so compromises resources dedicated to protecting against acute physical hazards.Answer
  4. D
    A municipal entity should only approve energy infrastructure proposals that produce measurable ecological benefits within a single fiscal cycle.
  5. E
    A public agency is justified in rejecting an environmental project only if that project completely fails to produce long-term reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Answer

The argument is best justified by the principle that a public governing body should not fund long-term environmental improvements if doing so compromises resources dedicated to protecting against acute physical hazards.
The correct principle supplies the exact normative standard required by the argument: when a municipal project offering long-term environmental gains threatens the funding of measures designed to guard against acute physical threats (such as levee failures), the entity should not fund that environmental project. This directly warrants the conclusion that the board acted properly in rejecting the conversion.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Isolate the conclusion and identify the underlying premises.
Conclusion: The municipal energy board was justified in rejecting the geothermal conversion proposal. Premises: The proposal offers thirty-year greenhouse gas reductions, but funding it requires reallocating money designated for structural flood-control levee repairs.
Understanding the precise premise-to-conclusion link clarifies the logical gap that the governing principle must bridge.
2
Formulate the structural rule necessary to validate the conclusion.
The rule must state that when forced to choose, protecting against severe physical hazards (levees) takes priority over securing gradual, long-term environmental goals (thirty-year emission cuts), thereby justifying rejection of the latter.
A justifying principle functions as a sufficient bridge that leads directly to the normative judgment reached in the argument.
3
Evaluate the choices to eliminate distractors that misstate the conditional relationship or overextend scope.
The statement prioritizing protection against acute physical hazards over long-term environmental improvements directly bridges the premises to the board's decision without introducing illicit reversals or unwarranted absolute claims.
The correct choice must strictly apply to the trade-off described without demanding extraneous conditions.

Key Concept

Identifying a bridge principle that logically guarantees a normative conclusion from factual comparative premises.
Estimated Time:1m 15s
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