16. Publicity campaigns for endangered species are unlikely to have much impact on the most important environmental problems, for while the ease of attributing feelings to large mammals facilitates evoking sympathy for them, it is more difficult to elicit sympathy for other kinds of organisms, such as the soil microorganisms on which large ecosystems and agriculture depend.
Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
(A) The most important environmental problems involve endangered species other than large mammals.
(B) Microorganisms cannot experience pain or have other feelings.
(C) Publicity campaigns for the environment are the most effective when they elicit sympathy for some organism.
(D) People ignore environmental problems unless they believe the problems will affect creatures with which they sympathize.
(E) An organism can be environmentally significant only if it affects large ecosystems or agriculture.


Pls explain with reasoning

as with most other CR's, it's helpful to SIMPLIFY THE ARGUMENT.

here's a simplified version of the argument:
* sympathy is only gotten easily for large mammals.
* therefore, sympathy won't exist for the most important environmental problems.

when you simplify the argument down to these essentials, you can see that we have to assume (a), i.e., that "the most important environmental problems" don't involve large mammals.

as with other assumptions, you can also REVERSE this one, and see whether the argument falls apart:
the reversal of (a) is "the most important environmental problems DO involve large mammals."
if this is the case, then the argument falls apart, because the sympathy that is normally extended to large mammals will then extrapolate to these important environmental problems.

this question is taken from powerscore cr bible page 195 question number 4......i thought this was a gmatprep forum

this is a different folder. this folder is dedicated to miscellaneous verbal problems from our own cat exams.

we do have a folder dedicated to gmat prep, as well as another folder dedicated to miscellaneous problems from random sources. be sure to check the identity of the folder carefully before you post.