Multiple choice

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

One of our hopes for the New Year is that Congress and the Bush administration will jointly and urgently address the manifold problems plaguing America's coastal waters. Two important panels, one private, one commissioned by Congress itself, have warned that the oceans simply cannot sustain prolonged abuse from industrial and recreational overfishing, from unchecked coastal development as well as polluted agricultural and urban runoff. Last month the White House released its formal response to the findings of the Congressional commission. The most that can be said about this 39-page report is that it is earnest; a summons to the barricades it is not. Though billed as an action plan, the report is actually an invitation to paralysis by analysis, calling for more committees and more research into problems that have been committee-ed and researched to death. We do not, for instance, need more science to tell us that industrial fishing has strip-mined the oceans of valuable fish species, that pollution is killing coral reefs and causing dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. What we need are concrete regulatory initiatives to discipline the commercial fishing industry (letting scientists, not fishermen, set quotas), to control residential development, reform farming practices and provide enough money to get the job done.

What is the primary purpose of the passage?

  1. To save America's coastal waters, we need concrete regulatory initiatives; not more research.

  2. The Congress and the Bush administration propose more years of research to solve the problems of America's coastal water.

  3. The 39-page report touches on most of the major problems and it calls for more committees and more research into the problems of America's coastal waters.

  4. Many species of valuable fishes have become extinct due to industrial and recreational over-fishing.
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

The statements - “though billed…………. job done” suggests that the problem of America's coastal water can be solved only if the Congress takes some concrete regulatory initiatives, instead of proposing the idea of more research - as the report submitted by Congressional Commission suggests. “. What we need are concrete regulatory initiatives “. Hence, (1) is the answer.

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