Fines levied against those responsible for certain environmentally damaging accidents are now so high that it costs a...

laurenkirwan on December 20, 2019

Please reply!!! I am confused as well. thanks.

BenMingov on December 21, 2019

Hi Baahmed and Lauren, thanks for the question!

The argument can be condensed as follows:

The fines for those responsible for environmentally damage are so high that it costs more to pay the fine than to pay to implement measures that would prevent the accident. Since businesses value profits, if a company thinks it might potentially have an environmentally damaging accident, it will pay for the prevention measures.

We are trying to weaken this argument, namely that businesses are going to preemptively pay for safety measures rather than just pay more after the fact.

Answer choice A states businesses generally "greatly" underestimate the risk of future accidents. This would weaken the argument because it now follows that many businesses will likely misevaluate the risk of an accident, and will not act accordingly to implement preventative measures. For these businesses that think risk is negligible, it wouldn't be valuing their profits to implement safety measures if they don't think there is a real risk of an accident/fine. And accordingly, they would not implement the safety measures rather than just facing a fine.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions or would like me to elaborate on the incorrect answer choices!

faithwood21 on April 28, 2020

Can you elaborate on why D is not correct?

Emil-Kunkin on August 26 at 01:05AM

I dont see how D is really relevant. Whether businesses consider it an ordinary expense, some extraordinary event, or something else doesnt change the argument since we have no idea how business change their behavior for each of these categories.