Digital SAT Reading and Writing Practice Question #1665

Text 1: Historian David Landes argued that the British Industrial Revolution was driven primarily by internal cultural values, specifically widespread mechanical literacy, empirical curiosity, and secure property rights that fostered rapid technological innovation. Text 2: Economic historian Kenneth Pomeranz challenges Landes's Eurocentric thesis, demonstrating that Western Europe and the Yangtze Delta of China exhibited comparable levels of commercialization and technological capability as late as 1750. Rather than cultural superiority, Pomeranz attributes Britain's divergence to geographic windfalls: abundant, accessible coal deposits and slave-based New World colonies that relieved ecological pressures on domestic land. Based on the texts, how would Pomeranz (Text 2) most likely respond to Landes's argument (Text 1)?