The main point of the last paragraph (lines 67–78) is that:
","rationale_html":null,"correct_answer":["A"],"equiv_key":"12ae21ede27ff202dc281921","has_media":false,"has_mathml":false,"has_table":false,"section_label":"Reading","options":[{"label":"A","content_html":"adopting a Freedom Lawn can arguably be a bold political and social act.
","ord":0},{"label":"B","content_html":"the biggest benefit of adopting a Freedom Lawn is being able to buck a multinational industry.
","ord":1},{"label":"C","content_html":"a neighborhood takes on a carefree feel when homeowners adopt a Freedom Lawn.
","ord":2},{"label":"D","content_html":"it isn’t logical to reject civic duty simply for the sake of adopting a Freedom Lawn.
","ord":3}],"passage":{"id":"act_practice_pdf:pt2:reading:p2","source_id":"act_practice_pdf","form_id":"act_practice_pdf:pt2","section":"reading","number":"II","kind":"INFORMATIONAL","title":null,"content_html":"This passage is from the book Welcome to Subirdia: Sharing Our Neighborhoods with Wrens, Robins, Woodpeckers, and Other Wildlife by John M. Marzluff (©2014 by John M. Marzluff). Do not covet your neighbor’s lawn. Having a “perfect” lawn is an original sin of most Americans. Our love of lawn is rooted in our history as a former British colony, and perhaps even in our evolution on short5 grass savannahs, where ancestral hominids found safety from predators. I mowed lawns for a living as a kid. So did my brothers and most of our friends. When we weren’t cutting them, we played or relaxed on them. Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of suburbia, 10 espoused the value of lawns as giving his neighborhoods a “sense of ampleness, greenness, and community.” Many suburbanites foster lawns to boost the value of their homes, as safe havens for their kids, or as firebreaks. Some see lawns as art, as proof of our domi15 nation over nature, or as a way to gain prestige among their neighbors. Whatever the reason, most ecologists agree that the ubiquity of the lawn has outstripped its benefits. Domination of suburbia by lawn constrains the diversity of birds that could be supported. Robins, 20 starlings, crows, wagtails, oystercatchers, and a few other birds forage in lawns, but to my knowledge, not a single species of bird, mammal, reptile, or amphibian reproduces and carries out its other life functions in the modern lawn. 25 In 2005, 2 percent of the coterminous United States, some forty million acres of land, was lawn. Nearly every bit was composed of only a few nonnative grass species. These invaders are regularly mowed to a low, even height and kept continuously green and free 30 of weeds and pests. To maintain this sea of grass Americans annually spend $30 billion. They use eight hundred million gallons of gas, seven billion gallons of water, three million tons of nitrogen fertilizer, and thirty thousand tons of pesticide. The use of pesticides 35 alone is ten times greater than used by the average farmer and includes chemicals that disrupt normal hormone function and reproduction, are suspected to cause cancer, and are banned in other countries. Simply filling up gas-powered lawnmowers is an ecological disas40 ter of the highest order; seventeen million gallons of gas are spilled annually. Concern about lawns has sparked a great deal of debate, creative thought, and neighbor-to-neighbor strife. In 1991, a savvy group of graduate students and 45 faculty from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies joined their colleagues in the School of Art and Architecture to consider how Americans could redesign their lawns. The resulting book details the history of lawns and charts a plan for those 50 who wish to follow the first commandment. Lawn owners can increase bird use of their turf by reducing its extent, bordering it with shrubs, shading it with trees, mowing it with hand- or electric-powered machines, and skipping the fertilizers and pesticides. 55 Doing this produces what the students and faculty refer to as a “Freedom Lawn.” The plant composition of such lawns diversifies into a rich mix of grasses, forbs, and flowers pollinated and grazed by native, beneficial insects, which in turn are eaten by birds and other 60 animals. The less often a lawn is mowed, the more likely it is to be used by an array of animals. A less-disturbed lawn will attract goldfinches to ripe dandelion seeds, provide nest sites under tussocks for juncos and spar65 rows, and harbor frogs, turtles, and small mammals such as moles and voles. Those who adopt Freedom Lawns buck a multinational industry heavily invested in producing seed, sod, fertilizer, pesticide, irrigation and lawn equipment, and 70 service for those twenty-six million American homes that contract out their lawn care. But the pressure to conform is often more immediate. Neighbors who tolerate shaggy lawns are often thought of as laggards, negligent of their civic duty. As Michael Pollan, author of 75 The Omnivore’s Dilemma, notes: “That subtle yet unmistakable frontier, where the crew-cut lawn rubs up against a shaggy one, is a scar on the face of suburbia— an intolerable hint of trouble in paradise.” From the book Welcome to Subirdia: Sharing Our Neighborhoods with Wrens, Robins, Woodpeckers, and Other Wildlife by John M. Marzluff (©2014 by John M. Marzluff, reproduced with permission of Yale University Press).
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