Many visitors to Yellowstone National Park need airlines, car rentals, hotels, and restaurants during their visits. These services generate carbon emissions. Emily Wilkins and Jordan Smith found that most of the environmentally harmful emissions come from travel services to and from the park. Wilkins and Smith found that policymakers could help reduce these emissions by encouraging people to visit state or national parks closer to their homes to cut down on their travel.
Which choice best states the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?
Explanation
Context: Wilkins and Smith found that most of the environmentally harmful emissions tied to Yellowstone visits come from travel to and from the park. The task is to state the function of the underlined final sentence.
Answer: C) It suggests a course of action to address the problem described earlier in the text.
Why? With the emissions problem already laid out, the sentence proposes a remedy: policymakers could encourage people to visit parks nearer home, cutting the travel that generates most of those emissions.
Traps:
- A) The harm was stated in the earlier sentences, and nothing marks these emissions as unique to Yellowstone; the same travel logic applies to other parks.
- B) "Could help reduce" describes a step policymakers might take, not work they have long been doing.
- D) The text opens with statements about visitors and services rather than a question, so there is nothing for this sentence to rephrase.