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Difficulty: EasyComparative Reading Analysis

Passage A
Market-based approaches to environmental protection, particularly tradable emissions permit systems, offer significant advantages over traditional command-and-control regulations. Under conventional regulatory schemes, governments mandate specific pollution-control technologies or set uniform emission ceilings for all industrial facilities. Such uniform mandates ignore the wide variation in compliance costs across different firms; forcing an older factory to retrofit its machinery is often far more expensive than requiring a modern facility to achieve equivalent reductions. In contrast, emissions trading establishes an overall cap on aggregate pollution while allowing firms to buy and sell permits. Facilities that can abate pollution cheaply will reduce emissions beyond their required targets and sell surplus allowances, whereas facilities facing exorbitant abatement costs can purchase permits instead. By establishing a market price for emissions, this mechanism achieves aggregate reduction targets at the lowest total cost to society while generating continuous financial incentives for technological innovation.

Passage B
Although economic theorists champion tradable emissions permits for their theoretical cost efficiency, market-oriented mechanisms frequently produce severe geographical inequities. In a market system, profit-maximizing corporations in dense industrial corridors often find it cheaper to purchase excess permits from distant, cleaner regions rather than install expensive localized scrubbers or transition to clean energy. Consequently, total regional emissions may decline on paper, but localized concentrations of hazardous co-pollutants—frequently termed toxic hotspots—persist or even intensify. Historically, these hotspots disproportionately cluster in socioeconomically marginalized communities adjacent to industrial zones. While traditional command-and-control mandates may impose higher overall compliance costs across an entire industry, their uniform, non-negotiable facility-level standards guarantee a baseline level of environmental safety for every community, preventing the spatial concentration of pollution that market forces routinely exacerbate.

Which one of the following statements expresses an assertion with which the authors of both Passage A and Passage B would be most likely to agree?

  1. A
    Market-based emissions systems inherently lead to higher aggregate nationwide pollution levels than uniform regulatory mandates.
  2. B
    Technological innovation in pollution abatement is the primary factor determining whether a community achieves environmental equity.
  3. Traditional command-and-control regulations typically impose higher overall compliance costs on industry than do tradable emissions permit systems.Answer
  4. D
    Socioeconomically marginalized communities experience identical health risks under market-based systems as they do under command-and-control regimes.
  5. E
    Individual industrial facilities should be strictly prohibited from purchasing emissions allowances from facilities located in other regions.

Answer

Traditional command-and-control regulations typically impose higher overall compliance costs on industry than do tradable emissions permit systems.
The credited choice correctly identifies a point of mutual agreement directly confirmed by the text. The author of Passage A argues that uniform command-and-control mandates ignore cost disparities and that permit trading achieves pollution reduction at the lowest total cost to society. The author of Passage B directly concedes this premise, noting that while traditional command-and-control mandates impose higher overall compliance costs across an entire industry, their uniform standards protect local communities.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze Passage A's claim regarding the compliance costs of command-and-control versus market-based regulations.
Passage A explains that uniform mandates force high-cost facilities into expensive retrofits and concludes that emissions trading achieves aggregate targets at the lowest total cost to society.
Establishing the first author's explicit view on relative economic compliance costs.
2
Analyze Passage B's stance regarding the overall compliance costs of command-and-control regulation.
Passage B acknowledges that traditional command-and-control mandates may impose higher overall compliance costs across an entire industry, even while arguing that they prevent localized hotspots.
Identifying whether the second author concurs with the economic cost comparison.
3
Synthesize the overlapping viewpoint between both passages.
Both authors agree on the economic reality that traditional command-and-control regulation generates higher total compliance costs for industry than tradable permit systems.
Determining the shared proposition supported by textual evidence in both passages.

Key Concept

Identifying Points of Agreement in Comparative Reading
Estimated Time:1m 15s
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Topics

Comparative Reading Analysis

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