In an effort to reduce carbon emissions from corporate travel, management at Veloce Strategy announced a policy requiring all employees traveling distances under 300 miles to take passenger trains instead of commercial flights. Company executives project that this policy will reduce the firm's total annual travel-related carbon footprint by at least 15 percent, noting that short-haul flights currently account for 20 percent of Veloce's travel emissions and that electric passenger rail produces negligible direct emissions.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the executive's projection depends?
- APassenger rail travel for journeys under 300 miles is consistently less expensive per employee than booking short-haul commercial flights.
- Employees subject to the new policy will not choose to drive personal gasoline-powered automobiles for a significant portion of their business trips under 300 miles.Cevap
- CShort-haul flights of under 300 miles produce more carbon emissions per passenger-mile than long-haul international flights.
- DThe passenger rail network connecting cities under 300 miles apart will experience major service delays over the coming year.
- EVeloce Strategy will completely offset its remaining travel-related carbon emissions by purchasing environmental credits within five years.
Cevap
The correct option is the statement that employees subject to the new policy will not choose to drive personal gasoline-powered automobiles for a significant portion of their business trips under 300 miles.
The argument relies on the premise that eliminating short-haul flights (which constitute 20% of emissions) by mandating electric rail will yield a net reduction of at least 15%. For this projection to hold, employees must not replace flights with another carbon-intensive transport method, such as driving gasoline-powered vehicles. If employees were to drive instead, the resulting auto emissions would offset the savings from avoiding short-haul flights, causing the conclusion to collapse.
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Identifying Unstated Assumptions via the Negation Test