CAT 2018 Slot 1: Past Year Question Paper with Solution | CAT Mock Test Series 2024 PDF Download

 Page 1


CAT 2018 Paper SLOT 1 [SOLVED]                                                    
 
 “Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has 
dramatically changed,” [says psychologist Gay] Bradshaw. . . . “Where for centuries humans and 
elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use 
the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of 
humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.” . . . 
Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of 
testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between 
elephants and humans. But. . . Bradshaw and several colleagues argue. . . that today’s elephant 
populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades 
of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of 
familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the 
wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is 
nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture. . . . 
Elephants, when left to their own devices, are profoundly social creatures. . . . Young elephants 
are raised within an extended, multitiered network of doting female caregivers that includes the 
birth mother, grandmothers, aunts and friends. These relations are maintained over a life span as 
long as 70 years. Studies of established herds have shown that young elephants stay within 15 
feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, after which young females are 
socialized into the matriarchal network, while young males go off for a time into an all-male 
social group before coming back into the fold as mature adults. . . . 
This fabric of elephant society, Bradshaw and her colleagues [demonstrate], ha[s] effectively 
been frayed by years of habitat loss and poaching, along with systematic culling by government 
agencies to control elephant numbers and translocations of herds to different habitats. . . . As a 
result of such social upheaval, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and 
inexperienced mothers. Young orphaned elephants, meanwhile, that have witnessed the death of 
a parent at the hands of poachers are coming of age in the absence of the support system that 
defines traditional elephant life. “The loss of elephant elders,” [says] Bradshaw . . . "and the 
traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and 
behavior development in young elephants.” 
Page 2


CAT 2018 Paper SLOT 1 [SOLVED]                                                    
 
 “Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has 
dramatically changed,” [says psychologist Gay] Bradshaw. . . . “Where for centuries humans and 
elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use 
the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of 
humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.” . . . 
Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of 
testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between 
elephants and humans. But. . . Bradshaw and several colleagues argue. . . that today’s elephant 
populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades 
of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of 
familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the 
wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is 
nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture. . . . 
Elephants, when left to their own devices, are profoundly social creatures. . . . Young elephants 
are raised within an extended, multitiered network of doting female caregivers that includes the 
birth mother, grandmothers, aunts and friends. These relations are maintained over a life span as 
long as 70 years. Studies of established herds have shown that young elephants stay within 15 
feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, after which young females are 
socialized into the matriarchal network, while young males go off for a time into an all-male 
social group before coming back into the fold as mature adults. . . . 
This fabric of elephant society, Bradshaw and her colleagues [demonstrate], ha[s] effectively 
been frayed by years of habitat loss and poaching, along with systematic culling by government 
agencies to control elephant numbers and translocations of herds to different habitats. . . . As a 
result of such social upheaval, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and 
inexperienced mothers. Young orphaned elephants, meanwhile, that have witnessed the death of 
a parent at the hands of poachers are coming of age in the absence of the support system that 
defines traditional elephant life. “The loss of elephant elders,” [says] Bradshaw . . . "and the 
traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and 
behavior development in young elephants.” 
CAT 2018 Paper SLOT 1 [SOLVED]                                                    
 
What Bradshaw and her colleagues describe would seem to be an extreme form of 
anthropocentric conjecture if the evidence that they’ve compiled from various elephant 
researchers. . . weren’t so compelling. The elephants of decimated herds, especially orphans 
who’ve watched the death of their parents and elders from poaching and culling, exhibit behavior 
typically associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in 
humans: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering and 
hyperaggression. . . . 
[According to Bradshaw], “Elephants are suffering and behaving in the same ways that we 
recognize in ourselves as a result of violence. . . . Except perhaps for a few specific features, 
brain organization and early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar.” 
 
Q 1: The passage makes all of the following claims EXCEPT: 
1. elephant mothers are evolving newer ways of rearing their calves to adapt to emerging 
threats. 
2. the elephant response to deeply disturbing experiences is similar to that of humans. 
3. human actions such as poaching and culling have created stressful conditions for elephant 
communities. 
4. elephants establish extended and enduring familial relationships as do humans. 
 
Q 2: Which of the following statements best expresses the overall argument of this passage? 
1. Recent elephant behaviour could be understood as a form of species-wide trauma-related 
response. 
2. Elephants, like the humans they are in conflict with, are profoundly social creatures. 
3. The relationship between elephants and humans has changed from one of coexistence to 
one of hostility. 
4. The brain organisation and early development of elephants and humans are extremely 
similar. 
Page 3


CAT 2018 Paper SLOT 1 [SOLVED]                                                    
 
 “Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has 
dramatically changed,” [says psychologist Gay] Bradshaw. . . . “Where for centuries humans and 
elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use 
the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of 
humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.” . . . 
Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of 
testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between 
elephants and humans. But. . . Bradshaw and several colleagues argue. . . that today’s elephant 
populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades 
of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of 
familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the 
wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is 
nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture. . . . 
Elephants, when left to their own devices, are profoundly social creatures. . . . Young elephants 
are raised within an extended, multitiered network of doting female caregivers that includes the 
birth mother, grandmothers, aunts and friends. These relations are maintained over a life span as 
long as 70 years. Studies of established herds have shown that young elephants stay within 15 
feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, after which young females are 
socialized into the matriarchal network, while young males go off for a time into an all-male 
social group before coming back into the fold as mature adults. . . . 
This fabric of elephant society, Bradshaw and her colleagues [demonstrate], ha[s] effectively 
been frayed by years of habitat loss and poaching, along with systematic culling by government 
agencies to control elephant numbers and translocations of herds to different habitats. . . . As a 
result of such social upheaval, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and 
inexperienced mothers. Young orphaned elephants, meanwhile, that have witnessed the death of 
a parent at the hands of poachers are coming of age in the absence of the support system that 
defines traditional elephant life. “The loss of elephant elders,” [says] Bradshaw . . . "and the 
traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and 
behavior development in young elephants.” 
CAT 2018 Paper SLOT 1 [SOLVED]                                                    
 
What Bradshaw and her colleagues describe would seem to be an extreme form of 
anthropocentric conjecture if the evidence that they’ve compiled from various elephant 
researchers. . . weren’t so compelling. The elephants of decimated herds, especially orphans 
who’ve watched the death of their parents and elders from poaching and culling, exhibit behavior 
typically associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in 
humans: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering and 
hyperaggression. . . . 
[According to Bradshaw], “Elephants are suffering and behaving in the same ways that we 
recognize in ourselves as a result of violence. . . . Except perhaps for a few specific features, 
brain organization and early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar.” 
 
Q 1: The passage makes all of the following claims EXCEPT: 
1. elephant mothers are evolving newer ways of rearing their calves to adapt to emerging 
threats. 
2. the elephant response to deeply disturbing experiences is similar to that of humans. 
3. human actions such as poaching and culling have created stressful conditions for elephant 
communities. 
4. elephants establish extended and enduring familial relationships as do humans. 
 
Q 2: Which of the following statements best expresses the overall argument of this passage? 
1. Recent elephant behaviour could be understood as a form of species-wide trauma-related 
response. 
2. Elephants, like the humans they are in conflict with, are profoundly social creatures. 
3. The relationship between elephants and humans has changed from one of coexistence to 
one of hostility. 
4. The brain organisation and early development of elephants and humans are extremely 
similar. 
                                                      
 
 
Q 3: Which of the following measures is Bradshaw most likely to support to address the problem 
of elephant aggression? 
1. Funding of more studies to better understand the impact of testosterone on male elephant 
aggression. 
2. The development of treatment programmes for elephants drawing on insights gained 
from treating post-traumatic stress disorder in humans. 
3. Studying the impact of isolating elephant calves on their early brain development, 
behaviour and aggression. 
4. Increased funding for research into the similarity of humans and other animals drawing 
on insights gained from human-elephant similarities. 
 
Q 4: In paragraph 4, the phrase, “The fabric of elephant society . . . has(s) effectively been 
frayed by . . .” is: 
1. an accurate description of the condition of elephant herds today. 
2. a metaphor for the effect of human activity on elephant communities. 
3. an exaggeration aimed at bolstering Bradshaw’s claims. 
4. an ode to the fragility of elephant society today. 
 
Q 5: In the first paragraph, Bradshaw uses the term “violence” to describe the recent change in 
the human-elephant relationship because, according to him: 
1. there is a purposefulness in human and elephant aggression towards each other. 
2. elephant herds and their habitat have been systematically destroyed by humans. 
3. human-elephant interactions have changed their character over time. 
4. both humans and elephants have killed members of each other’s species. 
The only thing worse than being lied to is not knowing you’re being lied to. It’s true that plastic 
pollution is a huge problem, of planetary proportions. And it’s true we could all dwvg o more to 
Page 4


CAT 2018 Paper SLOT 1 [SOLVED]                                                    
 
 “Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has 
dramatically changed,” [says psychologist Gay] Bradshaw. . . . “Where for centuries humans and 
elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use 
the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of 
humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.” . . . 
Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of 
testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between 
elephants and humans. But. . . Bradshaw and several colleagues argue. . . that today’s elephant 
populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades 
of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of 
familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the 
wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is 
nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture. . . . 
Elephants, when left to their own devices, are profoundly social creatures. . . . Young elephants 
are raised within an extended, multitiered network of doting female caregivers that includes the 
birth mother, grandmothers, aunts and friends. These relations are maintained over a life span as 
long as 70 years. Studies of established herds have shown that young elephants stay within 15 
feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, after which young females are 
socialized into the matriarchal network, while young males go off for a time into an all-male 
social group before coming back into the fold as mature adults. . . . 
This fabric of elephant society, Bradshaw and her colleagues [demonstrate], ha[s] effectively 
been frayed by years of habitat loss and poaching, along with systematic culling by government 
agencies to control elephant numbers and translocations of herds to different habitats. . . . As a 
result of such social upheaval, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and 
inexperienced mothers. Young orphaned elephants, meanwhile, that have witnessed the death of 
a parent at the hands of poachers are coming of age in the absence of the support system that 
defines traditional elephant life. “The loss of elephant elders,” [says] Bradshaw . . . "and the 
traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and 
behavior development in young elephants.” 
CAT 2018 Paper SLOT 1 [SOLVED]                                                    
 
What Bradshaw and her colleagues describe would seem to be an extreme form of 
anthropocentric conjecture if the evidence that they’ve compiled from various elephant 
researchers. . . weren’t so compelling. The elephants of decimated herds, especially orphans 
who’ve watched the death of their parents and elders from poaching and culling, exhibit behavior 
typically associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in 
humans: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering and 
hyperaggression. . . . 
[According to Bradshaw], “Elephants are suffering and behaving in the same ways that we 
recognize in ourselves as a result of violence. . . . Except perhaps for a few specific features, 
brain organization and early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar.” 
 
Q 1: The passage makes all of the following claims EXCEPT: 
1. elephant mothers are evolving newer ways of rearing their calves to adapt to emerging 
threats. 
2. the elephant response to deeply disturbing experiences is similar to that of humans. 
3. human actions such as poaching and culling have created stressful conditions for elephant 
communities. 
4. elephants establish extended and enduring familial relationships as do humans. 
 
Q 2: Which of the following statements best expresses the overall argument of this passage? 
1. Recent elephant behaviour could be understood as a form of species-wide trauma-related 
response. 
2. Elephants, like the humans they are in conflict with, are profoundly social creatures. 
3. The relationship between elephants and humans has changed from one of coexistence to 
one of hostility. 
4. The brain organisation and early development of elephants and humans are extremely 
similar. 
                                                      
 
 
Q 3: Which of the following measures is Bradshaw most likely to support to address the problem 
of elephant aggression? 
1. Funding of more studies to better understand the impact of testosterone on male elephant 
aggression. 
2. The development of treatment programmes for elephants drawing on insights gained 
from treating post-traumatic stress disorder in humans. 
3. Studying the impact of isolating elephant calves on their early brain development, 
behaviour and aggression. 
4. Increased funding for research into the similarity of humans and other animals drawing 
on insights gained from human-elephant similarities. 
 
Q 4: In paragraph 4, the phrase, “The fabric of elephant society . . . has(s) effectively been 
frayed by . . .” is: 
1. an accurate description of the condition of elephant herds today. 
2. a metaphor for the effect of human activity on elephant communities. 
3. an exaggeration aimed at bolstering Bradshaw’s claims. 
4. an ode to the fragility of elephant society today. 
 
Q 5: In the first paragraph, Bradshaw uses the term “violence” to describe the recent change in 
the human-elephant relationship because, according to him: 
1. there is a purposefulness in human and elephant aggression towards each other. 
2. elephant herds and their habitat have been systematically destroyed by humans. 
3. human-elephant interactions have changed their character over time. 
4. both humans and elephants have killed members of each other’s species. 
The only thing worse than being lied to is not knowing you’re being lied to. It’s true that plastic 
pollution is a huge problem, of planetary proportions. And it’s true we could all dwvg o more to 
                                                      
 
reduce our plastic footprint. The lie is that blame for the plastic problem is wasteful consumers 
and that changing our individual habits will fix it. 
Recycling plastic is to saving the Earth what hammering a nail is to halting a falling skyscraper. 
You struggle to find a place to do it and feel pleased when you succeed. But your effort is wholly 
inadequate and distracts from the real problem of why the building is collapsing in the first place. 
The real problem is that single-use plastic—the very idea of producing plastic items like grocery 
bags, which we use for an average of 12 minutes but can persist in the environment for half a 
millennium—is an incredibly reckless abuse of technology. Encouraging individuals to recycle 
more will never solve the problem of a massive production of single-use plastic that should have 
been avoided in the first place. 
As an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, I have had a disturbing window into the accumulating 
literature on the hazards of plastic pollution. Scientists have long recognized that plastics 
biodegrade slowly, if at all, and pose multiple threats to wildlife through entanglement and 
consumption. More recent reports highlight dangers posed by absorption of toxic chemicals in 
the water and by plastic odors that mimic some species’ natural food. Plastics also accumulate up 
the food chain, and studies now show that we are likely ingesting it ourselves in seafood. . . . 
Beginning in the 1950s, big beverage companies like Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch, along 
with Phillip Morris and others, formed a non-profit called Keep America Beautiful. Its mission 
is/was to educate and encourage environmental stewardship in the public. . . . At face value, 
these efforts seem benevolent, but they obscure the real problem, which is the role that corporate 
polluters play in the plastic problem. This clever misdirection has led journalist and author 
Heather Rogers to describe Keep America Beautiful as the first corporate greenwashing front, as 
it has helped shift the public focus to consumer recycling behavior and actively thwarted 
legislation that would increase extended producer responsibility for waste management. . . . 
[T]he greatest success of Keep America Beautiful has been to shift the onus of environmental 
responsibility onto the public while simultaneously becoming a trusted name in the 
environmental movement. . . . 
So what can we do to make responsible use of plastic a reality? First: reject the lie. Litterbugs are 
not responsible for the global ecological disaster of plastic. Humans can only function to the best 
of their abilities, given time, mental bandwidth and systemic constraints. Our huge problem with 
Page 5


CAT 2018 Paper SLOT 1 [SOLVED]                                                    
 
 “Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has 
dramatically changed,” [says psychologist Gay] Bradshaw. . . . “Where for centuries humans and 
elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use 
the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of 
humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.” . . . 
Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of 
testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between 
elephants and humans. But. . . Bradshaw and several colleagues argue. . . that today’s elephant 
populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades 
of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of 
familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the 
wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is 
nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture. . . . 
Elephants, when left to their own devices, are profoundly social creatures. . . . Young elephants 
are raised within an extended, multitiered network of doting female caregivers that includes the 
birth mother, grandmothers, aunts and friends. These relations are maintained over a life span as 
long as 70 years. Studies of established herds have shown that young elephants stay within 15 
feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, after which young females are 
socialized into the matriarchal network, while young males go off for a time into an all-male 
social group before coming back into the fold as mature adults. . . . 
This fabric of elephant society, Bradshaw and her colleagues [demonstrate], ha[s] effectively 
been frayed by years of habitat loss and poaching, along with systematic culling by government 
agencies to control elephant numbers and translocations of herds to different habitats. . . . As a 
result of such social upheaval, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and 
inexperienced mothers. Young orphaned elephants, meanwhile, that have witnessed the death of 
a parent at the hands of poachers are coming of age in the absence of the support system that 
defines traditional elephant life. “The loss of elephant elders,” [says] Bradshaw . . . "and the 
traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and 
behavior development in young elephants.” 
CAT 2018 Paper SLOT 1 [SOLVED]                                                    
 
What Bradshaw and her colleagues describe would seem to be an extreme form of 
anthropocentric conjecture if the evidence that they’ve compiled from various elephant 
researchers. . . weren’t so compelling. The elephants of decimated herds, especially orphans 
who’ve watched the death of their parents and elders from poaching and culling, exhibit behavior 
typically associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in 
humans: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering and 
hyperaggression. . . . 
[According to Bradshaw], “Elephants are suffering and behaving in the same ways that we 
recognize in ourselves as a result of violence. . . . Except perhaps for a few specific features, 
brain organization and early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar.” 
 
Q 1: The passage makes all of the following claims EXCEPT: 
1. elephant mothers are evolving newer ways of rearing their calves to adapt to emerging 
threats. 
2. the elephant response to deeply disturbing experiences is similar to that of humans. 
3. human actions such as poaching and culling have created stressful conditions for elephant 
communities. 
4. elephants establish extended and enduring familial relationships as do humans. 
 
Q 2: Which of the following statements best expresses the overall argument of this passage? 
1. Recent elephant behaviour could be understood as a form of species-wide trauma-related 
response. 
2. Elephants, like the humans they are in conflict with, are profoundly social creatures. 
3. The relationship between elephants and humans has changed from one of coexistence to 
one of hostility. 
4. The brain organisation and early development of elephants and humans are extremely 
similar. 
                                                      
 
 
Q 3: Which of the following measures is Bradshaw most likely to support to address the problem 
of elephant aggression? 
1. Funding of more studies to better understand the impact of testosterone on male elephant 
aggression. 
2. The development of treatment programmes for elephants drawing on insights gained 
from treating post-traumatic stress disorder in humans. 
3. Studying the impact of isolating elephant calves on their early brain development, 
behaviour and aggression. 
4. Increased funding for research into the similarity of humans and other animals drawing 
on insights gained from human-elephant similarities. 
 
Q 4: In paragraph 4, the phrase, “The fabric of elephant society . . . has(s) effectively been 
frayed by . . .” is: 
1. an accurate description of the condition of elephant herds today. 
2. a metaphor for the effect of human activity on elephant communities. 
3. an exaggeration aimed at bolstering Bradshaw’s claims. 
4. an ode to the fragility of elephant society today. 
 
Q 5: In the first paragraph, Bradshaw uses the term “violence” to describe the recent change in 
the human-elephant relationship because, according to him: 
1. there is a purposefulness in human and elephant aggression towards each other. 
2. elephant herds and their habitat have been systematically destroyed by humans. 
3. human-elephant interactions have changed their character over time. 
4. both humans and elephants have killed members of each other’s species. 
The only thing worse than being lied to is not knowing you’re being lied to. It’s true that plastic 
pollution is a huge problem, of planetary proportions. And it’s true we could all dwvg o more to 
                                                      
 
reduce our plastic footprint. The lie is that blame for the plastic problem is wasteful consumers 
and that changing our individual habits will fix it. 
Recycling plastic is to saving the Earth what hammering a nail is to halting a falling skyscraper. 
You struggle to find a place to do it and feel pleased when you succeed. But your effort is wholly 
inadequate and distracts from the real problem of why the building is collapsing in the first place. 
The real problem is that single-use plastic—the very idea of producing plastic items like grocery 
bags, which we use for an average of 12 minutes but can persist in the environment for half a 
millennium—is an incredibly reckless abuse of technology. Encouraging individuals to recycle 
more will never solve the problem of a massive production of single-use plastic that should have 
been avoided in the first place. 
As an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, I have had a disturbing window into the accumulating 
literature on the hazards of plastic pollution. Scientists have long recognized that plastics 
biodegrade slowly, if at all, and pose multiple threats to wildlife through entanglement and 
consumption. More recent reports highlight dangers posed by absorption of toxic chemicals in 
the water and by plastic odors that mimic some species’ natural food. Plastics also accumulate up 
the food chain, and studies now show that we are likely ingesting it ourselves in seafood. . . . 
Beginning in the 1950s, big beverage companies like Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch, along 
with Phillip Morris and others, formed a non-profit called Keep America Beautiful. Its mission 
is/was to educate and encourage environmental stewardship in the public. . . . At face value, 
these efforts seem benevolent, but they obscure the real problem, which is the role that corporate 
polluters play in the plastic problem. This clever misdirection has led journalist and author 
Heather Rogers to describe Keep America Beautiful as the first corporate greenwashing front, as 
it has helped shift the public focus to consumer recycling behavior and actively thwarted 
legislation that would increase extended producer responsibility for waste management. . . . 
[T]he greatest success of Keep America Beautiful has been to shift the onus of environmental 
responsibility onto the public while simultaneously becoming a trusted name in the 
environmental movement. . . . 
So what can we do to make responsible use of plastic a reality? First: reject the lie. Litterbugs are 
not responsible for the global ecological disaster of plastic. Humans can only function to the best 
of their abilities, given time, mental bandwidth and systemic constraints. Our huge problem with 
CAT 2018 Paper SLOT 1 [SOLVED]                                                    
 
plastic is the result of a permissive legal framework that has allowed the uncontrolled rise of 
plastic pollution, despite clear evidence of the harm it causes to local communities and the 
world’s oceans. Recycling is also too hard in most parts of the U.S. and lacks the proper 
incentives to make it work well. 
 
Q 6: In the second paragraph, the phrase “what hammering a nail is to halting a falling 
skyscraper” means: 
1. relying on emerging technologies to mitigate the ill-effects of plastic pollution. 
2. encouraging the responsible production of plastics by firms. 
3. focusing on consumer behaviour to tackle the problem of plastics pollution. 
4. focusing on single-use plastic bags to reduce the plastics footprint. 
 
Q 7: In the first paragraph, the author uses “lie” to refer to the: 
1. blame assigned to consumers for indiscriminate use of plastics. 
2. understatement of the enormity of the plastics pollution problem. 
3. understatement of the effects of recycling plastics. 
4. fact that people do not know they have been lied to. 
 
Q 8: The author lists all of the following as negative effects of the use of plastics EXCEPT the: 
1. slow pace of degradation or non-degradation of plastics in the environment. 
2. air pollution caused during the process of recycling plastics. 
3. adverse impacts on the digestive systems of animals exposed to plastic. 
4. poisonous chemicals released into the water and food we consume. 
 
Q 9: Which of the following interventions would the author most strongly support: 
1. completely banning all single-use plastic bags.