Read the excerpt from Greta Thunberg’s speech at the United Nations Climate Action Summit. So a 50 percent risk is simply not acceptable to us—we who have to live with the consequences. To have a 67 percent chance of staying below a 1 point 5 degrees global temperature rise—the best odds given by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]—the world had 420 gigatons of CO 2 left to emit back on January 1, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons. How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just "business as usual” and some technical solutions? With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO 2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 and 1 half years. How does the underlined rhetorical question support the claim that current efforts to reduce CO 2 emissions are ineffective?
Answer
A
by emphasizing that the audience is not trying hard enough to reduce CO 2 emissions
B
by highlighting the pattern in global temperature rises that cause CO 2 emissions to increase
C
by presenting a solution to the problems of not addressing CO 2 emissions sooner
D
by focusing on methods that would be most effective at immediately reducing CO 2 emissions
Explanation
The question “How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just ‘business as usual’ and some technical solutions?” challenges the audience’s confidence in its current approach. Thunberg points out that the remaining CO₂ budget is rapidly shrinking, so continuing as usual is not enough. This emphasizes that the audience is not making a sufficiently serious effort to reduce emissions, matching choice D.
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