Digital SAT Reading and Writing Practice Question #342

Text 1 Historians have frequently attributed the unprecedented success of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain to geographical determinism. Specifically, Britain was endowed with vast, easily accessible coal deposits. Because coal was the indispensable fuel of the era, powering steam engines and iron smelting, its abundance geographically destined Britain to outpace its European neighbors in industrialization. From this perspective, the ingenuity of British inventors was merely a secondary factor catalyzed by the sheer availability of this geological lottery ticket. Text 2 While it is undeniably true that coal was heavily utilized during the Industrial Revolution, crediting geography as the primary driver of British industrialization is deeply reductive. What truly set Britain apart were its institutional frameworks—namely, robust property rights, a functioning patent system that protected intellectual property, and relatively free markets. Without these socio-economic incentives in place, the raw materials beneath the soil would have remained dormant, as individuals would have lacked the motivation to invest capital and time into the arduous process of technological innovation. Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the specific claim in Text 1 regarding the role of Britain's coal deposits?